Over 30 enthusiastic people from around different industries participated in Google Analytics Individual Qualifications (GAIQ) training on Tue 13th of November in Helsinki, Finland, hosted by Quru.
Run by Google’s Regional Analytics Trainers Mira Mäkiranta and Sanna Åman, both working as senior web consultants for Quru, the first part of the training kicked off with why analytics and data are important to any business (it is not just about gathering data, but it is for making better decisions!), and then followed with Google Analytics terminology (e.g. what is considered a “user” vs “session” vs “interaction i.e. hit”, and what are the differences between Metrics and Dimensions, to name a few). After lunch, it was time to ‘get our hands dirty’ with the actual tool itself, and understand the most relevant reports that are either standard-built (e.g. Audience, Acquisition or Conversion reports) or custom-built, such as dashboards. The topics also covered the basics of attribution modeling and remarketing with GA.
Condensed from originally two days of training to one day, the pace of the training was quite fast. For the GAIQ test in mind, it seemed helpful to have at least some understanding of Google Analytics beforehand, however, attending the training also provided benefits to people who were just interested in getting a good overview of the tool, without the intention of completing the GAIQ test.
I managed to talk to a couple of participants during the breaks, and here’s what they thought of the training:
Creative agency planners from SEK thought the training was useful so they would have a better understanding of web analytics when planning creative materials to their customers – how to build user-friendly campaign sites with relevant call-to-actions to drive conversion.
Verkkokauppa.com’s Campaign Analyst Kimmo Nevanlinna already had a good understanding of GA, but the training provided some further confirmation on the ways he has been using the tool in his daily work.
For some others, this day was a refresher course on GA, i.e. nothing too much new, but provided a solid information package that helped them refresh their knowledge of the tool.
“For the GAIQ test in mind, it seemed helpful to have at least some understanding of Google Analytics beforehand, however, attending the training also provided benefits to people who were just interested in getting a good overview of the tool, without the intention of completing the GAIQ test.”
At the end of the day, it was time to actually do the GAIQ test! The test is done online, the time allocated is 90 min with 70 multiple choice questions. Passing criteria for the exam is that 80% of the answers need to be correct. Some of the questions were quite straightforward, but many of the questions did require some thinking – so it definitely was not that easy, especially when taken right after an intensive training day (luckily it is possible to re-do the test the next day in case you didn’t pass the first time around).
Overall, it was an interesting crash-course training day, which hopefully made all participants more aware of the possibilities of what advanced online analytics can bring to their business.
Did you participate in the training? What did you think, share your thoughts!
One last thing, in case you were wondering, I took the exam and passed!
Minna Kruhse is a Client and Business Development Director at Quru.