1. Interactive data analysis
In this video, we'll explore three powerful features: drill-down, drill-through, and cross-filtering, which could help you enhance your data analysis skills.
Let's start by looking at the drill-down feature where, say, we're curious about the total sessions coming from the Campaign 1. Drill-down allows us to delve deeper within the same visualization.
So, let’s click on a specific campaign within the "Distribution" pie chart. Turning on the drill-down and clicking on the "Campaign 1" slice reveals a
breakdown of total sessions by traffic source, giving us a more granular view. We can click on the drill-down button again to turn off the drill-down mode in the visual.
Now that you have some understanding of drill-down, let’s understand drill-through.
So for that, we’ll right-click on a specific source within this "Traffic Source" bar chart and click on ‘Drillthrough’ and you will be taken to a detail tab for the specific traffic source we clicked on.
Imagine we want to understand organic search traffic in more detail. Drill-through takes us to a completely separate report or table.
Here, clicking on "Organic Search" might show us the top landing pages,
keywords driving traffic, or other relevant details specific to organic search users. If you have to go back to the original summary page, we can click on the Back button here in order to move back to the actual page. Please do note, that you will only see this button here if it's being configured along with the drillthrough.
Finally, let’s understand cross-filtering.
Cross-filtering lets us see how interactions in one visualization impact others. Here, we have drilled down to quarter level from yearly view and now let’s click on the "Quarter 2" in the line chart.
See how it will cause the "Profit" bar chart to update, showing the details only for Quarter 2 in all other visuals. This helps us analyze user behavior across different data points. Clicking on that data point again, will move the visuals to their actual state.
Remember, drill-down helps you explore deeper within a single
visualization, drill-through takes you to a separate report for specifics, and cross-filtering lets you see how selections in one view affect others.
By understanding and using these functionalities, you can transform your website traffic data from basic reports to insightful stories.
Let’s review your understanding more by working on a few exercises.
2. Let's practice!