| Read time 11 min read

Using Google Analytics Segments to Better Understand Website Visitors

Understand your Google Analytics + test your SEO in 60 seconds! Diib easily syncs with Google Analytics and then uses the power of big data to help you quickly and easily increase your traffic and rankings. We’ll even let you know if you already deserve to rank higher for certain keywords. As seen in Entrepreneur!

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Using Google Analytics Segments to Better Understand Website Visitors

Read time 11 min read
sing Google Analytics Segments

Understand your Google Analytics + test your SEO in 60 seconds! Diib easily syncs with Google Analytics and then uses the power of big data to help you quickly and easily increase your traffic and rankings. We’ll even let you know if you already deserve to rank higher for certain keywords. As seen in Entrepreneur!

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Easy-to-use automated social media + SEO tool

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Automated ideas to improve Social Media traffic + sales

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Keyword and backlink monitoring + ideas

Google Analytics ranks at the top of analytical software, and you can install and use it free on our website. The application tracks information about your website visitors and their visits to help you plan and execute more effective marketing campaigns. The first step is to install the software on your website.

If you own any kind of website, Google Analytics can provide invaluable information. If you run a commercial website or a blog — even a nonprofit — you’ll want to know some of the following information:

  • How many visitors do I receive over a given time period?
  • How do my visitors find my website?
  • Where do most of my visitors live?
  • Which areas of my website are most popular with visitors?
  • Do I need to use mobile-friendly applications?
  • Which blog or website topics are most popular with visitors?
  • Which marketing strategies work best?
  • How do my sales conversions break down by demographic groups?
  • How much mobile traffic do I get?

There are hundreds of questions that Google Analytics can answer, so it’s important to install the software and learn how to make the most of it. The following information should help you get started with retrieving invaluable insights from analytics software:

1. Google Analytics Segment by URL

Adding Google Analytics to your site is easy with direct code or using the WordPress plugin, Site Kit. The software can help you improve SEO rankings and fine-tune your marketing efforts using Google Analytics custom segments. You can determine what information Google Analytics collects in the various segments, and one of the most fruitful segments involves identifying the URLs that send you web traffic. Google Analytics Segment by URL provides many analytical benefits for blogs and businesses. For instance:

sing Google Analytics Segments

(Image Credit: Social Media Examiner

The URLs might come from links to other websites, PPC campaigns, industry websites, online review websites, affiliate referrals, etc. It’s important to collect information about the websites sending you traffic so that you can optimize the results. According to support.google.com, you can better identify critical information related to the URLs that send you business using the following analysis techniques:

  • You can add parameters for the URLs that you use in marketing and analyze the parameters of those URLs and other URLs that link to or visit your site.
  • The five parameters that you can set Google Analytics to detect include identifying the source of the URL, type of website, type of campaign for URLs that you’re using, paid search keywords and type of content.
  • Use the data to determine how each campaign is working.
  • Uncover areas where improvement is needed.
  • Post and track the results of social media campaigns.

You can design a custom marketing campaign by setting the parameters of URLs manually, or you can use the Campaign URL Builder on Google Analytics or Google Play to add parameters automatically. Here is an example and breakdown of Google Analytics URL Builder:

sing Google Analytics Segments

(Image Credit: Google Analytics)

A word of caution in order for newbies to Google Analytics software: You should never allow anyone to access your account to manage it from another Google account. Breakups are tough, and the “consultant” could hijack all your data if you should happen to part ways. The data could give a big competitive boost to a partner turned competitor.

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2. Google Analytics Segments Filters

You can use both segments and filters to narrow data that conform to the criteria that you choose. For example, you might search for data on customers who convert in one session or those who convert after visiting a particular area of the website. You can design custom reports based on filtering for relatively broad criteria. Segments allow more input for choosing criteria, so you use them primarily for focusing on complex criteria. You can use Google Analytics segments filters within segments to build more complex filtering criteria.

Google Analytics Segments and Filters provide slightly different results when you apply them to analyze your data. According to Google Support, filters produce a report that includes just those rows that match your criteria exactly. Segments limit reports to the sessions that match your input. There are other key differences between segments and filters that include:

  • You can use much longer criteria in segments, but filters limit you to 255 Regex characters.
  • Filters are permanent, and they require editing rights, but segments are temporary lists that anyone can view.
  • Segments can be viewed on past data, but filters only work of data going forward.
  • You can view the effect of filtering immediately with segments, but it can take from a few minutes to several hours to view the results of filters.
  • Segments must be set for each use, but you can share the data from filters.

sing Google Analytics Segments

(Image Credit: Google Support)

Using filters and segments sounds complex, but you can get the hang of it by trial-and-error efforts. Learning to manipulate page views and data can generate leads, prepare lists for seasonal marketing and trigger instant marketing emails and offers based on real-time behaviors.

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3. Google Analytics Segment Builder

Google provides a lot of raw data about activity on your website, but unfortunately, you have to do a little setup work to get the best insights. One of the most critical of these jobs, according to blog.ladder.io, is building segments, or custom data reports. The Google Analytics Segment Builder can be accessed at Google Analytics > Admin > View > Personal Tools & Assets > Segments. Here is an example:

sing Google Analytics Segments

(Image Credit: Ladder)

Ideally, the most important goal of Google Analytics is to find reasons why customers convert. You could use this exact phrase in a Google search or GA segment, but the term is so broad as to be almost meaningless. You have to narrow your results, and the segment builder helps you do just that. Examples of narrowing the criteria might include:

  • Conversions based on higher quality products
  • Conversions based on a low price
  • Ease of website navigation
  • Easy contact options for customer service, Q&As or Live Chat
  • Content that appeals to pride of ownership
  • Location marketing conversions based on GPS technology

Segments allow quite a bit of space to input complex criteria. As you’ve probably realized from your website marketing efforts, long-tailed keywords work better, and the same is true for more complex criteria for determining why customers convert.

The benefits of using segments include:

  • Ability to target mobile traffic for GPS marketing
  • Proof in the form of statistical data of marketing success
  • Transparent understanding of a campaign’s success or failure
  • Ability to uncover hidden marketing opportunities
  • Ability to import the pre-built segments of experts from the Google Analytics Solutions Gallery

You can layer criteria to drill down even further to identify the strongest information that generates conversions.

We hope that you found this article useful.

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4. How to Create Segments in Google Analytics

Google will tell you how to create segments in Google Analytics with recommendations, the segment builder utility, pre-built segments and intuitive instructions. It’s useful to browse the gallery to get a good idea of what other business owners use to build their segments.

According to support.google.com, segments can hold up to 20 filters, which you can use to define precise criteria — such as an operator, metric, scope, dimension or comparative function. The operator value can be self-explanatory like age or gender. Metrics can define any characteristic of conversion rates. You can set a value for comparisons, and the scope of the data you seek might include exact matches, partial matches and revenue ranges.

Hits are single actions — such as customers starting a video or checking a catalog description. Sessions are all the actions that your customers take during a website visit. The automated segment builder helps you power through the complexities of understanding computer logic by prompting you to set values and choose other options for your segment.

Conditions and Sequences

Conditions and sequences filters can include dimension and metrics data as well as other filtering options. You can include or exclude certain data. For example, you might want to include conversions from links while excluding conversions from repeat site visitors.

Using AND or OR conditions, you can specify whether to return data where all of the conditions are true, in which case you link the conditions with AND, or whether to return all the data that match any of the conditions, in which case you choose OR.

When you choose session-based or user-based rules within a filter, AND is used. The reports will show only the data that meet both conditions. The same principle can apply when setting a sequence: AND requires each sentence to follow consecutively while OR allows any subsequent sequence to follow any previous filtering results.

Admittedly, it takes some time to get a handle on how to create segments in Google Analytics. You can practice on old data, test your ideas and see how well your results correlate with conversion statistics.

5. Google Analytics Advanced Segments

Using Google Analytics Advanced Segments allows you to specify complex conditions and display your data in unique ways. Default segments don’t always apply to every industry or marketing goal. You might want to search for one-word keywords that bring visitors to your site, but these seldom provide a great cost-value return because everyone is targeting for them.

Advanced segment-building allows you to focus on Google traffic, which is the most popular of the search engines, and drill down to referrals from different platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. You might further filter your data by including links that use four-or-more-words as keyword phrases. You can also refine your lists by geographic location, demographic data, viewings of different website pages. etc. The image below shows an example of the advanced demographics page:

sing Google Analytics Segments

(Image Credit: Online Metrics)

Segment building is an ideal strategy when you have a complex segment that you will want to use often. One common advanced segment involves companies that have a social blog that generates leads and traffic. You might find it useful to separate links and traffic, and an advanced segment can be saved to your Distilled Accounts to make it easy to use again and again.

Google Analytics offers plenty of advanced segment presets that filter the most common visitor groups like new visitors, non-paid visitors and PPC traffic. However, social content, business reviews and other marketing options generate all sorts of visitors that don’t fit a standard filtering template. Some of these custom segments that might prove useful for your business include:

  • Conversion Rate by Website Visit Count: Many businesses don’t expect to convert first-time visitors. Conversion by Count of Visits is especially useful for healthcare companies, B2B suppliers and other companies that convert customers after multiple site visits. You can further refine your segment by determining which content resulted in the most conversions. You can track conversions by specific products and services as well.
  • Filtering Traffic from Suspicious Sources: Every website gets its share of suspicious traffic. Identifying the internet service provider responsible for suspicious traffic can prove useful. You can filter out the most common ISPs to leave a list that’s likely to contain sketchy traffic that you want to eliminate.
  • Charting a Ripple Effect: Advanced segments can isolate traffic from specific cities and regions, and a comparison can reveal B2B marketing opportunities, geographic affinity for a product brand and buying attitudes in cities vs.towns.
  • Blog Bounce Rate: Blogs get a high bounce rate because thousands of people browse the internet looking for subjects of interest. It’s understandable that many visitors will spend varying amounts of time before bouncing. This segment can remove viewers who only visit one page without completely removing them from your blog traffic. You can compare landing pages for your blog to fine-tune your strategy for attracting a wider audience.
  • Cart Abandonment: Every website can benefit from knowing why people abandon their shopping carts. You can sort your abandonment rate by where the customers came from — Facebook, LinkedIn or a Twitter post by Donald Trump or Nancy Pelosi. Comparing drop rates can reveal a pattern of drop offs on a segment-by-segment basis or a universal abandonment rate.

sing Google Analytics Segments

6. Google Analytics Add Segments

The Google Analytics Add Segments process is straightforward and easy to learn. According to a Google Support article, Distilled Segments can be used as a filter for your reports at any time, and an activated segment will remain active until it’s removed. By default, the All Sessions segment is automatically applied, and you choose a date range. Creating a segment involves these steps:

  • Determine the Scope of the Segment: This involves determining whether to apply one segment or multiple segments. You might choose a Mobile Traffic or Facebook Link segment. Within the segment, you can filter for various conditions. These include filtering by city, conversion rate, pages visited, etc. You can use multiple segments to compare rates between mobile traffic, social media links, etc.
  • Apply Segments: You can apply segments to your report by signing into your Google Analytics account, opening a view that has the reports you want to analyze, and opening the report. At the top of the report, click the Add Segment button.
  • List of Segments: The button opens a list of existing segments that includes built-in segments and segments that you have created. Check the box of each segment you want to apply to your report. You can open the menu to remove any segment from your report.
  • Create a New Segment: Use the segment builder utility to create and name a new segment. The builder shepherds you through the process of creating and applying component filters, choosing a metric or dimension and entering values and other variables.

 

(Image Credit: Google Support)

Diib® Can Help Decipher Your  GA Segments!

There is a lot more going on behind-the-scenes of your website than you can grasp at first, and it would be a shame to waste this valuable intelligence that you alone can leverage for business success. Segments and filters give you the tools that you need for expert marketing analysis. Integration with the Diib® User Dashboard is seamless; providing you with the ultimate in analytics and customization. Here are some of the features that compliment Google Analytics Segments:

  • Bounce rate monitoring and repair
  • Social media integration and performance
  • Broken pages where you have backlinks (404 checker)
  • Keyword, backlink, and indexing monitoring and tracking tools
  • User experience and mobile speed optimization
  • Technical SEO monitoring

Click here for your free scan or simply call 800-303-3510 to speak to one of our growth experts.

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FAQ’s

A Google Analytics segment was designed to help narrow the integrated data from all data to specifically what you asked for. You can use this segment throughout the sections, And you don’t lose the data from one screen to another.

Google Analytics allows you to make ultra personalized messages to specific audiences with certain attributes. This tool will guide you through choosing your ideal attributes from a master list and putting together your customized group.

Segment app is a solution to manage customer analytics and data from multiple sources. The app compiles and integrates with hundreds of other apps, bringing all that data into one single platform. It also stores your raw data for your convenience at any time.

According to support at Google Analytics, “The Secondary Dimension feature allows you to define a primary dimension and then view that data by a secondary dimension within the same table. For example, in the Referral Traffic report, the default dimension is Source.”

Market segments respond in a predictable manner to marketing strategies or promotions. An example of market segment common characteristics are: lifestyle, age, gender and interests. Market segmentation includes characteristics like: geographic location, demographics, psychographic and behavioral.

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Daniel Urmann

Author Bio:

Daniel Urmann is the co-founder of Diib.com. Over the past 17 years Daniel has helped thousands of business grow online through SEO, social media, and paid advertising. Today, Diib helps over 150,000 business globally grow online with their SaaS offerings. Daniel’s interest include SMB analytics, big data, predictive analytics, enterprise and SMB search engine optimization (SEO), CRO optimization, social media advertising, A/B testing, programatic and geo-targeting, PPC, and e-commerce. He holds a Master of Business Administration (MBA) focused in Finance and E-commerce from Cornell University – S.C. Johnson Graduate School of Management.

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