Recently, I embarked on an unplanned data and analytics journey. This began as a side-quest to solve a pain point, and it turned into pattern of work going forward. This post will show how a recent example of how I helped move a project along by getting involved.
The problem: Our data team was overloaded, and we need to track web analytics across multiple properties for upcoming product launches?
Final Solution: Build a looker dashboard on top of Google Analytics and Google Big Query.
Solution Diagram
Solution Steps:
- Setup Google Analytics (GA4) on third-party Point-of-Sale systems, 15+ cross-domain properties.
- Setup and send GA4 data to Google Big query.
- Connect Big Query to Looker Studio as data source.
- Grant access to analysts team for looker studio to build dashboards
The steps above, are technical, and were not my initial plan when setting out to view web analytics. Those pieces are what I happily shouldered and in doing so gained a few interesting insights.
GA4 and its accompanying suite of tools are now apart of my tool belt. I had to dig very deep into Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Big Query, and Looker Studio to make the solutions above work. This has become a valuable skill to share with my team as we grow our digital footprint.
For the data team, Big Query was a blind spot, and their workload did not afford them time to unlock the tool. I carried that load for the data team and was able to offload to the analysts when they became available. This allowed us to move quickly, efficiently, and also prove out a Proof of Concept workflow.
The product team can now build concept queries in Big Query and pass them to Data Team. This is valuable because we removed a silo between data and product. Its okay to “carry the water” for the team, you’ll be surprised what you find along the way.
Cheers,
Nigel A.