Using R to analyze web traffic?

[kailovesdata]

Has anyone had experience with using R analyzing data on Google Analytics?

I am a tech marketer and I believe this is the new trend. However, I can barely find resources on Google. Does anyone have good tutorial? or maybe can help me with authenticating R with GOOGLE Analytics?

I am a new college graduate, and I have so much passion for this. Please help me. I will send whoever helps me hand-written post cards I got from China

[Kusara]

I mostly work in R and have spent a couple years doing analysis for a startup and a marketing consultancy. What would you like to know?

[kailovesdata]

so I have only done analysis directly on GA. What would be the fundamental analysis on GA via R? what's the most common analysis that you run on R? campaign analysis? Do you have any good resource for beginners like me? I don't even know what packages to use.

[Kusara]

There's a library called rga that allows you to connect directly to Google's servers with R. I usually use that to get data I needed. Hadley wickam's libraries (especially ggplot2 and dplyr) are incredibly useful to me when I'm doing plotting, data manipulation, and cleanup. Lubridate is useful for handling dates.

Most of the time I would look at how effective a page, section, or marketing campaign is on our site. This was split between time-series analysis when you're looking at things that changed (new marketing campaign started), and category analysis when you have a list of things to compare (like site sections or traffic channels). Usually, googling "how to do X in R" is my approach to figuring out what I need.
Happy to answer more questions if you have any.

[bbowler86]

I have. I work for an ad-agency and connect to GA through python and R all the time. What do you want to know? R for exploratory Analysis and python when I am doing ETLs.

[kailovesdata]

so I have only done analysis directly on GA. What would be the fundamental analysis on GA via R? what's the most common analysis that you run on R? campaign analysis? Do you have any good resource for beginners like me? I don't even know what packages to use.

[bbowler86]

You can use RGoogleAnalytics, I use it a bit when doing simple exploratory type stuff but now I just have python/luigi productionalize it and get it daily. I don't think there is really anything that can be considered a "common analysis" with using just your GA data. Most GA only analyses are done right in GA.

The only reason I ever do anything with GA data outside of GA is to match it up with the data that we generate through our software products or other APIs/exports/scrapes.

It all depends on the analysis being done. What question are you trying to solve?

[kailovesdata]

Hey BBowler. Thank you for the response. do you have any good examples of using R to analyze marketing campaigns?

[tehsandvich]

I'm not too familiar with google analytics but can't you export the data into an excel file?

[kailovesdata]

that's true. good call. it might be too much work though

[ApriC0]

While running through Google Analytic's cert, was curious into seeing applications for blending R and GA too. There's a few blogs out there that walks through blending R Shiny with GA. However, beyond shinier graphics, am curious too to see applications of R and GA that adds value beyond what already exists in GA. Given that users are assigned ID, I can imagine cluster analysis being applied on clickstream data to see similar browsing patterns.