When your start out blogging and see that some traffic is hitting your site there’s always a question: who are these people?
Traffic is good – we all need/want it if we’re going to make a dent in the online world. But what we need more specifically is the right kind of traffic: visitors who are just the sort of folks we want reading our posts.
Google Analytics created Advanced Segments to give us new ways to sort and view our traffic.
Your Google Analytics reports actually already have some common segments built in.
- Visitor Segments
- New visitors
- Returning visitors
- Referring sites
- Search engines
- Users from a given geographic location (“Map Overlay”)
Think of segments simply as ways to slice up your traffic – compartments you can add your readers to, based on whatever criteria you choose, to examine how those different user groups behave on your site.
Advanced Segments allows you to slice it up in more nuanced ways.
For example, you can create an advanced segment that will only show visits from users who viewed three pages or more – we might call this an “engaged” segment of users. Let’s walk through how to set this segment up.
To get started, first click on the “Advanced Segments” link under the My Customizations menu while viewing your report.
Then, at the upper right, look for the “+ Create new custom segment” link.
This next page might look a bit confusing, but bear with me.
To create a segment you need to add what are called Dimensions and Metrics to it.
Dimensions: think of these as the “who, what, where and when” of your traffic. That is, Dimensions deal with what pages were viewed, who they are (new vs. returning visitors, for example) where these users came from and when they visited (I’m simplifying a bit, but it’s easier this way).
Metrics: these deal with the “how” of traffic – how users engaged with your website and pages, how long they spent, whether they viewed a single page and “bounced” off your site, whether they completed “Goals” that you’ve set, etc.
We’re looking to segment users by the number of page views. Since this is a Metric, we want to drag it to the box with the dotted outline that is labeled, “dimension or metric.”
Since we’re looking to isolate only those visits that had at least three pageviews, set the condition to “Greater than or equal to” three (“Greater than” two will also work).
Now we’ve set our condition – we’re scanning all recorded visits for those with Pageviews greater than or equal to three.
The “Test Segment” button allows you to check whether your segment contains any visits – which is helpful to know before you move forward. You’ll need to name your segment first (the name isn’t too important – just call it something that makes sense, like “Engaged Users” – or “3 or more pageviews”).
Now, after clicking “Test Segment,” you should see the number of visits that match our criteria.
Now click the “Create Segment” button. You’ll be brought back to the main Advanced Segments page where you’ll see all of the segments you’ve created. To dive into a segment just click its name (in blue).
What you’ll see after clicking into a segment should look exactly like the normal view of your Google Analytics report – but obviously with fewer visits.
To quickly turn a given segment on or off (or multiple segments) look for the small “Advanced Segments” drop-down button at the top right of your profile view.
Clicking this will expand a handy menu where you can check/uncheck multiple segments. It’s separated into two lists:
- Default Segments – the segments preloaded into every Google Analytics profile
- Custom Segments – the segments you have created
The possibilities here are wide open. I like to segment users by actions they take and where they came from. For example, if you have a cross-promotional partnership of sorts with another blog, you can isolate just those users who were referred by your partner blog and see how they interact with your blog, which posts they viewed most often, etc.
What you do with the information is wide open.
If you find, for example, that users referred from a certain partner blog all tend to gravitate towards a particular post of yours (or type of post), you might consider writing a guest post for that partner blog in the same vein as the post their users tend to like. Is this a guaranteed success? Nothing is. But you’re making an educated guess (which is better than flat-out guessing most days of the week). And you have data to back it up.
Go back to the Blogger’s Guide to Google Analytics.
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