Every system in your business generates data and stores it. Your Customer Relationship Management(CRM) stores sensitive information about your customers’ loyalty ratings, lifetime values, and the products they prefer. So, what feature can join offline business systems data with online data collected by google analytics? Data import is.
What is Data import? Data Import is the feature that lets you join data generated offline business with the online data collected by Analytics. Joining the two helps you organize, analyze, then take action on the unified data in a way that is best aligned with the specific needs of your business.
For a web publisher, the content management tool stores data dimensions like author and article category. Those in the e-commerce business can create catalogs to describe products based on prices, style, and size. Website owners use Google Analytics to track traffic and performance.
Also, on mobile apps or appliances, it is the stored data that gives you more information. The data exists in an information silo independently without being affected by other silos.
What feature can join offline business systems data with online data collected by Google Analytics?
If you run your business using different systems, you can unify offline and online data using analytics access to the data in one place. For instance, you can sync your CRM data, e-commerce data, and analytics to a single view to manage your business data from one place using Data Import.
Data Import Requirements
Data import is essential in running a business, and you need the following requirements to set it up:
- With permission from the property, you will upload the data.
- Get a formatted comma-separated values(CSV) file with the data you want to upload.
- An appropriate Data Set to hold the uploaded data.
- Get any custom dimensions or metrics that the Data Set may need.
- Some data import types may require an additional setup or configuration of your Analytics account. For instance, when using Refund Data Import, your property must be using the Enhanced Ecommerce plugin.
Once the formatted upload file and target Data Set are ready, use the Manage uploads file to import it. Now you know what feature can join offline business systems data with online data collected by google analytics. You can go ahead and integrate your data and run your business.
The types of data you can import
Through data import, you can upload and integrate at three different points in the data collection chain.
1. Hit-data import
You can directly send Hit-data imports into Analytics, which is an alternative to using the tracking code, Collection API, the Mobile SDKs, or Measurement Protocol. The imported hits are included in your Analytics property before processing.
Therefore, the imported data can be affected by processing-time actions like filters. The reason is, you are introducing hits, and all property views for the property can see them.
But, you can filter the data from selected views. Hit data supports uploading Refund Data, which aligns your internal e-commerce reporting with Analytics by importing e-commerce refund data.
2. Extended-data import
Extended-data import extends the already collected and processed or in process for the selected reporting views. The data is stored in a custom dimension or metric. In some instances, you might overwrite the default information already gathered, like importing a campaign’s Source or Medium size. You can also import user data, campaign data, geographical data, content data, product data, and custom data.
3. Summary data
Summary-data import is a sum-up of uploaded metrics. It is applied to selected reporting views after processing and aggregation of all collected data. Summary data is useful when you receive data import in batches, especially in hit collections. Also, summary data allows you to update information or add to the information once it is available.
Conclusion
Now you know what feature can join offline business systems data with online data collected by google analytics. Data Import is useful for users who have little technical know-how. Data Import is uploading data from external sources, then combining it with data you collect from analytics. You can also use Analytics to organize and analyze all data in better ways that reflect your business.
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