SHOW AND TELL

Tableau vs Google Analytics: Show and Tell

In today’s environment, integrated marketing is always evolving which means the software you choose to use for your personal use or for your company needs to be flexible and efficient.

Software and solution systems need to have the ability to adapt quickly to customer needs and developing trends. In accordance, software needs to efficiently leverage resources to achieve multiple goals and reach scalable solutions. As we have learned in IMC 642, Web Metrics and SEO, it is important that software is tailored to your business specific needs, big or small. For this reason, I believe Google Analytics and Tableau provide a comprehensive web analytics package for a wide variety of businesses to assist in making better business decisions

Tableau is a business intelligence system software that manages data modules and campaign metrics with a heavy emphasis on visualizing the data for actionable digestion for businesses and customers alike.  

Why are visuals so important?--->  “We make visual queries every time we search for some visual information that we need to carry out our cognitive task of the moment” (Ware,2008). There is power in visual perception as is it a skilled active process as we make sense of shapes and colors.  We seek out what we need through frequent eye movements, naturally creating a hierarchy of data consumption. Our eye movementss act as a sequence of visual ques which sort and rank the relevancy of content each time the eye come to a brief rest (Ware, 2008). Acting as pattern-processing machinery, visual fragments are retained according to relevance. Some fragments are not seen at all or retained for only a fraction of a second. While others are held for a second or two, and a tiny percentage forms part of our long-term memory (Ware, 2008). In the world of visual absorption, time is of the essence. To demonstrate the power of visualizing and absorbing data with color enhancement as visual ques, Join me in playing, “Count the 9’s” (Tableau Software, 2018).

Start with the top quadrants of number. See how long it takes you to count how many 9’s there are. Now try the exercise with the visual aid of the color, red.  You can literally, count the difference in time and effort.

(Images retrieved from Tableau Software, 2018)

To further explain he power of visuals, may I introduce to you, Tableau

TABLEAU BENEFITS

1.     Methods for visual data investigation

a.      Self Service dashboards allow for simple to complex cloud based source explorations. Can pull multiple analyses together or showcase conclusions intermittently or case by case.

b.     Minimalist approach to coding. Automated data is delivered to you.

2.     Drag and Drop, easy to use interface is attractive and functional for users of all analytic backgrounds.

3.     Integration and compatibility among many platforms. Individually and in totality. Connection to various data sources and advanced collaboration across desktop, mobile and Google Cloud Platform.

a.      “Tableau captures the entire spectrum by connecting natively to Google Analytics, Google Adwords, Google BigQuery, and Cloud SQL to analyze billions of rows in seconds without writing a single line of code” (Tableau Software, 2018). Read more here

b.     Build pipelines from different crowd applications and existing databases. Decrease “bottleneck” of data collection and analysis.

c.      For smaller companies Tableau can help extract data from the cloud application you are already using. Create relationships in your data. For example, if you were a nonprofit organization whose primary focus was fundraising, tableau would allow for sharable metrics across your field staff. In addition, creating dashboards that are only accessible and manipulated by regional manager.

4.     Flexible pricing and customer support

a.      Deploy it on the cloud or local servers. Publish dashboards and share with partners, customers and colleagues. Annual subscriptions and single payment licenses to meet needs and capacity of different companies.

i.                 Desktop.

ii.               Server.

iii.             Online: Cloud platform.

b. Support- Tech supports, automated data updates

Google Analytics is worldwide business intelligence system built on focus and quality driven marketing optimization for your business. It is a free web software that summarizes and presents data as high-level dashboards and reports visualized by funnel techniques. The Google Analytics tracking system is unique as it loads and tracks web server behavior based off of unique identifier codes. This information is useful in examining consumer behavior down to the individual across web and social platforms. The main intent of Google Analytics is to track and access conversion.

GOOGLE ANALYTICS BENEFITS

1.     Payment packages for individual to enterprises.

i.                 Free for individual and small to moderate business usage.

ii.                Quote based for enterprises.

2.     Advanced Reporting allows you to identify who your audience is. How they arrived to your website, if and how long they stayed active on your site and if you were able to lead them to your proposed goal of a conversion.

a.      Customer behavior and channel performance

b.     Demographics and interests.

3.     Integrated . It works with AdWords, AdSense, AdMob, DoubleClick advertiser and publisher products (Analytics 360 only), and other Google products (Google.com) For example, you can create remarketing lists or follow up emails or request using your Analytics data and see them automatically available in DoubleClick Bid Manager and AdWords. Click through rates illuminate the consumers path around your web sites.

4.     Budget Allocation can be identified by content analyses of website. What pages have the positive engagement. Which elements are you seeing a positive or negative trend via content of channel source.  Budgets can be redirected to elements that are producing the most value.

As the Benefits outline, Tableau and Google Analytics are comparative in nature but offer a fews difference in data orientation and visualization. I would begin with Google Analytics as it is a bit more cost friendly. As you grown in you analytics skills and you would like to be able to create and share goals and solutions, I think Tableau would be a great addition to your software toolbox. 

References

Google Analytics vs Tableau 2018 Comparison | FinancesOnline. (n.d.). Retrieved April 02, 2018, from https://comparisons.financesonline.com/google-analytics-vs-tableau-software

Google Analytics Solutions - Marketing Analytics & Measurement. (n.d.). Retrieved April 02, 2018, from https://www.google.com/analytics/#?modal_active=none

Tableau Software. (2003-2018). Retrieved from  https://www.tableau.com/solutions/google#WYK2heCrTPRhQPxP.99

Ware, C. (2008). Visual thinking for design (Morgan kaufmann series in interactive technologies). Burlington, MA: Morgan Kaufmann.