Google Analytics Advanced Segments

Google Analytics Advanced Segments

By: Errett CordEmail: ecord@ecord.usTwitter: @errettcord

Advanced segmentation is important!

•View data from only the traffic sources that interest you

•Apply custom reports to only particular traffic sources

•Performance decisions about particular marketing initiatives

•Allows you to compare different marketing channels

Sample Custom Segments

Only those visitors which converted ✓ Use these metrics as a target for all your campaigns ✓ Time on site, pages per visit, key pages

Only those visitors from Social Media✓Twitter, Facebook, Google+

Only visits from particular geographic locations ✓ Allow you to focus on those regions with sales efforts

Only visits that landed on a particular page and converted✓Use target metrics for all your campaigns

How to Set up Custom Segments

Bounce Rates

This opens the Advanced Segments Screen

All built-in, custom and starred segments can be easily applied from here

This is also where you create your own or import from a gallery!

New Segment Options

Click on the conditions tab to setup a custom report

Apply up to 4 segments simultaneously!

The reports will give you color coded data

Setup a Custom Segment

Click “Create new Segment”

Name the new segment

Example: Give it a name

Pick a Segment Category

Standard Categories• Demographics• Technology• Behavior• Date of First visit• Traffic Sources• Ecommerce

Advanced Categories• Conditions• Sequences

Common Segment Types

Demographics – Segment your visitors by age, gender, language, affinity category, and location.*Note that some of this information requires a change to the standard Google Analytics code.

Technology –Options include operating system, browser, screen resolution, device category and mobile variables.

Other Standard Segment Types

Behavior – Look at visitors by how often they visit, days since last visit, transactions, and visit duration.

Date of First Visit – Segment by when users first visited

Traffic Sources – Filter segments by campaign, medium, source and keyword.

Ecommerce – Segment users by revenue, days to transaction, product, and product category

Advanced Segment Types

Conditions – This segmentation allows you to create custom views based on your specific needs.

You can create segments based on a wide variety of variables and even exclude particular types of traffic as well as create ‘And / Or’ multi-level conditions.

Advanced Segment Types

Sequences Allows you create multi-step segments in order to view metrics of only those users following a particular pattern of your choosing.

Edit and Share

You can also edit, copy, share and delete any of the custom segments you make.

In order to share you simply click on ‘Share’ and a URL will be made which you can share via email or IM.

Crowd Sourcing your Advanced Segments

• Currently there are 22 built-in segments

• If these are not sufficient for your needs you can import from a gallery!

Gallery Imports

•Search

•Sort

•Filter by Rank

•Filter by Category

Custom Segments

There are literally thousands of different variations of advanced segmentation which can help you make better decisions and gain greater insight into the quantity and quality of traffic to your website.

Some examples to try:

• Create a segment that only tracks social media like Twitter, Facebook, and Google+

• Create a segment that only tracks Google organic traffic and compare that to a segment that only tracks Bing organic traffic

• Create a segment to track only email marketing efforts