Web Analytics India

- Contributed by Anish Jacob

“Can you confirm that there is no overlap between the organic search traffic and the paidsearch traffic reported in Google Analytics?”
This was the question posed to me by a client recently…

I immediately turned to the Advanced Segmentation feature of the tool. I quickly set up three custom segments as follows:

1. Organic Search Traffic: The segment of visitors that originated from organic search sources
2. Paid Search Traffic: The segment of visitors that originated from paid search sources
3. All Search Traffic: The segment of visitors from all search sources i.e, paid and organic

My hypothesis was that if there is no overlap of traffic then the sum of visits form organic sources and paid sources should be equal to the visits reported by all sources. However if the numbers don’t add up then we need to investigate and see what is causing the overlap.

I applied the segmentation to the Visitors Overview and the numbers spoke for themselves… no overlap! Thanks to the Advanced Segmentation feature answers such questions from clients is quick and easy.

- Contributed by Saagar Shinde

Most of the web-analyst in world does reporting-analysing on Daily & Weekly basis. Most of the time they have to go through the painful process – Visiting Google Analytics (GA), going to different profiles, selecting the required reports & then export or copy-past reports/data into the respective dashboards/reports. It’s becomes a hassle when your client asks for an ad-hoc, while you are busy with your weekly or monthly reporting. Seems more like, the web ‘analyst’ has become a clown in the office juggling between ‘n’ number of reports at the same time! It is important to manage time appropriately while using option called ‘Custom Reporting’ in GA. Custom Reporting means to ‘design, a kind of report which fits your need’ as defined by GA. Here, you can also create a report and use it the rest of your life. ‘Custom Reporting’ somewhat helps you to transform into ‘KING Analyst’ from being a ‘Reporting Slave’. Most people don’t use ‘Custom Reporting’, a perfect and thoughtful gift from Google Analytics to those who value time. They don’t use it because they proibably are ignorantor they love their old ways or they just prefer spending the day collecting data. Ok that is the theory bit, now miving to some real time reporting, Let’s make a Report which can be used weekly or monthly & then see how we can schedule it.

4 Steps / 4 minutes to save your precious time & effort:
(Ofcourse also to shed that shameful tag of being a Reporting Slave!!!)

I hope most of you are familiar with GA, a boon to web those seeing analytical help in the online space, which comes free of cost & user friendly.
1. Click on “Create new custom report”

2. Let’s make a report for “Engagement by Medium”. You can use 10 metrics in a tab. If you need any more metrics then add into Second Tab.

Remember you can make the simplest report & also the most complex one. Simple Reports needs common sense & Complex reports needs some smartness. Also remember we are doing this for significant purposes i.e. to save time.

3. You can click on ‘Preview Report’ tab to view it before its actual report generation. This will help you to make any changes if required. If you have previewed the report and are satisfied then click on ‘Create Report’ & Boooom! You have created the custom report & now you can view it. Note that you can use different advanced segments also for the same and it further facilitates date comparison if needed.

4. You can export the report in the format as per your requirement or schedule it. You can schedule the reports to different members in your team.

It is so simple to create custom reports & schedule it. Next time make sure you don’t waste your time by visiting your GA account & downloading it. It will be in your Inbox. Also note that you can use a similar subject line for your report. This will help you to filter the reports from your Inbox. If you ever get suspicious about your data which you have received, you can always do a quick quality check for authenticity of numbers by logging in to your GA account.
This time gained can help you change yourself from being a mere ‘Reporting Slave’ to a ‘KING Analyst’! You can invest your time for analysing the data you have received, ultimately giving your outputs, suggestion, advice, etc. Hope you enjoyed ‘the Custom Reporting which is so common still uncommon with Web Analysts’. You can comment below about your experience with ‘Custom Reporting & Scheduling reports’.
Not sure about all the tools in the industry but Omniture also provides you with such privileges.

- contributed by Anish Jacob

A few days after the Official Google Analytics Blog announced a set of new functionalities added to Google Analytics, we spoke about our liking for Advanced Segmentation and Custom Reports in Google Analytics. Based on my experience of using Advanced Segmentation in the past few weeks, I’d say it’s one of the most useful features incorporated into Google Analytics.

Before I share with you why I think Advanced Segmentation is an awesome feature, let me discuss why segmenting data is important from an analyst’s perspective. The numbers churned out by my web analytics tool is not just data, they are key insights about my customers’ interaction with my website. The reasons why customers visit my website are very different. Reports based on non-segmented data treat all visitors to a website as members of collective unit, rather than as unique individuals. Data about visitors who came to browse for product information is summarized together with data of existing customers who came to place repeat orders. In this scenario, as data gets aggregated by the reporting tool, critical insights that are unique to different customer segments tend to get buried deep inside the averages.

In order to gain insights that are actionable within the context of the unique groups of people who visit my website, I need to segment my visitor data. Segmenting the data will allow me to understand if my website adequately caters to the specific needs of different customer groups. Till the Advanced Segmentation feature was added to Google Analytics, we did not have a simple way to separate the datasets of different customer segments.

A detailed introduction to segmenting web analytics data can be found in this presentation by Seby Kallarakkal.

So why do I think the Advanced Segmentation feature is really cool? Here is my list of reasons:

1. With the click and drag interface creating new segments is really simple



2. I can use Regular Expressions in addition to a set of standard conditions to create well defined segments for my analysis



3. The test-as-you-build functionality ensures that you are moving along the right path at each stage of creating a new segment. In other words you don’t have to create a new segment and apply it to a report to find out if the segmentation has been done correctly. Or start from square-one if you want to make some changes.



4. I can apply multiple segments to the same report and compare the performance of each segment



5. I can copy and tweak a segment that has already been created so I can work smart and save time (Hat Tip: Google Analytics Team)

If you are still to explore the Advanced Segmentation feature of Google Analytics you can start by watching this step-by-step video, listed as part of the Google Analytics New Enterprise Features playlist.

See the video below. To improve the quality of the video, click on the small triangle a the lower right corner of the video after the video starts playing, and select the option HQ. Hope this helps!

For some cool ideas on how you could benefit from this feature please see the post by Avinash Kaushik titled “Google Analytics Releases Advanced Segmentation: Now Be A Ninja!”

If you need more information on advanced segmentation and how it is done, please leave your email id in a comment. And we will get in touch with you.