HIDDEN GEMS IN GOOGLE ANALYTICS

This is the fourth of six posts as we continue to delve deeper into each of the six steps of our free available guide - "6 Steps to Assessing Your Online Marketing Spend". If you haven't already you can sign up below to download this guide.

This post concentrates on step four of the guide, digesting your available data.

Within the the guide at this stage we showcase the ‘Model Comparison Tool’ available in Google Analytics (GA) to quickly digest your data in different attribution views. We thought we’d take this opportunity to list some of our favourite ‘hidden gems’ in Google Analytics.

Below we have listed our favourite reports and features that you may find useful.

Secondary Dimension

Using the first drop down immediately above a table in GA allows you to use Secondary Dimensions. This feature simply allows you to add an additional dimension to segment the data show further. Below we have included an example segmenting Paid Search data by device. Can see by simply viewing conversion rate performance only in this example can quickly learn more than just reviewing Paid Search overall conversion rate.

This feature can be used across majority of table views in GA, not just by Channel as we have down in this example.

Other frequent secondary dimensions we use include by channel, source, campaign and landing page.

Hostname

View the data by domain name using hostname as a dimension. This can be valuable for websites with subdomains, such as third-party checkouts or businesses combining multiple websites in one Google Analytics view. For the latter example, hostname can be used as a GA View filter – this allows you to use the same tag across multiple websites and create views for specific websites.

Hostname as a dimension allows you to analyse different websites performance alongside one another. A final example when this is useful for use is in setting up and reviewing cross domain tracking.

Plot Rows

For quick visualisation of trends, ‘Plot Rows’ allows you to map out specific dimensions within a report on a graph. See the example below showing Organic Search sessions plotted out alongside website total sessions.

Simple to use, simply select the checkbox for the desired dimension in the table and click Plot Rows - located above the table.

Demographic & Interest Reports

The Demographics and Interest sections allow you to better understand the audience arriving to your website. These reports cover Age, Gender and Interest Categories reports. These insights can be hugely beneficial to your marketing campaigns.

We often use this data to shape the audience we target through new Paid Social campaigns. Helping dictate the age and genders of the campaigns, layered with customer knowledge and other data sources available. Below shows an example report for total website sessions by age and gender.

To gather this data in GA you do have to enable these reports in your account. This can be found under Property Settings in the Admin section.

Once enabled it gives you the ability to also segment the rest of your data by these characteristics, can be done using Secondary Dimensions – as described above.

However, do note that not all your users visiting your website will have demographics associated with them, so these reports can represent a subset of your traffic.

There is still a wealth of features and reports available in GA so we will follow up with more hidden GA gems. Comment below with your any hidden gems we may have missed.

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