How to Create Advanced Segments in Google Analytics

Do you want to know how to use advanced segments to dig deeper into Google Analytics traffic?

Advanced segments in Google Analytics are a great way of isolating traffic into groups so that you can understand how users behave once they land on your website.

In this article, we’ll go into the details of Google Analytics Advanced Segments and how they benefit your traffic analysis activities.

Table of Content

• What are Advanced Segments in Google Analytics?
• Types of Advanced Segments in Google Analytics
• How to Create Advanced Segments in Google Analytics
• Analytify Brings eCommerce Advanced Segment to Your Website
• Conclusion
• Frequently Asked Questions

What are Advanced Segments in Google Analytics?

Google Analytics offers dozens of reports that present website traffic and user behavior data in multiple combinations. These reports are fine for users who simply want to check out traffic and user stats.

The challenge starts when you need to dig deeper into the data to discover actionable insights in the data. For many users, adding primary and secondary dimensions help in this regard. However, you might need to find answers to specific questions, such as “How many visitors from the EU are landing at a sales page.”

To answer this and similar questions, you need to isolate relevant data into segments that exclude unrelated data. These segments are known as Advanced Segments.

Some Examples of Advanced Segments in Google Analytics

The best thing about Advanced Segments is the versatility in mixing and matching the available metrics to group-specific data so that you can find out what’s happening in a particular context. Here’re a few ways you can use Advanced Segments to bring out new insights from the data.

• You can create a segment for each UTM you frequently use. This way, you can see the traffic trends for all campaigns that used that specific UTM.

• If social media platforms are an essential component of your marketing mix, you can create advanced segments in Google Analytics for these platforms. This segment allows you better to understand these platforms’ impact on your website traffic.

• You use keywords in website SEO and AdWords. If you want to isolate the traffic via these keywords, you can create a segment for each keyword to see only the traffic coming in response to these keywords.

• Another critical use of advanced segments in Google Analytics is to drill down into demographic information of website visitors. For example, you can create segments that pair age groups with landing pages. You can also include other vital metrics such as Bounce Rate and session time to add depth to the data.

3 Types of Advanced Segments in Google Analytics

As mentioned earlier, you have a lot of flexibility in creating advanced segments. Next, you should know that these segments can be divided into the following three categories.

Advanced Segments Based on Users

These segments are focused on the data for actual website visitors. In particular, these segments deal with the demographics and interests of the visitors.

Advanced Segments Based on Sessions

These segments are about sessions. Since visitors can have multiple sessions, these segments are great for analyzing user activities such as page visits.

Advanced Segments Based on Hits

These segments are more suitable for business-level analysis scenarios such as cart abandonment.

How to Create Advanced Segments in Google Analytics

Now that you have a fair idea of advanced segments in Google Analytics, it is time to go into the details of how you can create them.

To create advanced segments in Google Analytics, go to the Audience tab. Then, click the +Add Segment section to add a new section.

You’ll be taken to a new screen. Here, click the red button labeled + NEW SEGMENT.

This is where you can add a Google Analytics advanced segment. As you can see, you get a lot of flexibility in customizing the segment to fit your requirements. You can choose from the following segment types:

Demographics: Choose this option if you want to categorize visitors by their demographic details (such as age, gender, language, affinity category, in-market segment, or location).

Technology: Choose this option if you want to categorize visitors based on the technology they use to access the website.

Behavior: Choose this option if you want to segment visitors by website interaction, such as transactions and session duration.

Date of First Visit: Choose this option if you want to segment visitors by the first time they visit your website.

Traffic Sources: Choose this option if you want to segment visitors by sources such as campaign, medium, source, or keyword.

You can also see that you can use several data customization clauses, including and excluding, to fine-tune the segment’s data selection.

Next, click Preview to see a preview of the data included in the segment. Finally, if the data meets your requirements, click Save to finalize the segment setup process.

Analytify Brings eCommerce Advanced Segment to Your Website

Setting up an eCommerce Advanced Segment can reveal a lot about the shoppers. In particular, you can discover where they came from and what products in your store are popular among them. In addition, using Advanced Segment, you can find the channels that bring in the most revenue and find out important user actions such as cart abandonment.

To set up eCommerce-related advanced segments, you need to enable Enhanced eCommerce for the Google Analytics account.

Analytify the most advanced Google Analytics Plugin brings all this information to your website’s dashboard through its eCommerce Tracking modules for both WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads. When any of these modules is active, you can see advanced eCommerce stats such as volume and revenue of transactions, products added and removed from the cart, and unique transactions.

In addition, you can also see information such as Top Countries by Sale, and Product Information, including revenue and unique sales for each product in your store.

Conclusion: Advanced Segments in Google Analytics

We hope you know enough about Advanced Segments in Google Analytics to use them in your analysis. They’re a powerful way of looking at website traffic and visitor behavior data. They are easy to set up and help you uncover new insights that help you make informed business decisions.

Let us know what segments you set up and use in your analysis.

Frequently Asked Questions

That’s all! You can also check out The Beginner’s Guide to Custom Dimensions in Google Analytics and What is Page Value in Google Analytics (Exclusive Guide).

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