{"id":1452,"date":"2010-02-03T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-02-03T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staging.elixirrdigital.com\/us\/2010\/02\/03\/elixirr-digital-blog-unleash-the-power-of-google-analytics-9-advanced-segmentation\/"},"modified":"2025-03-05T14:53:40","modified_gmt":"2025-03-05T14:53:40","slug":"elixirr-digital-blog-unleash-the-power-of-google-analytics-9-advanced-segmentation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.elixirrdigital.com\/us\/2010\/02\/03\/elixirr-digital-blog-unleash-the-power-of-google-analytics-9-advanced-segmentation\/","title":{"rendered":"Elixirr Digital Blog Unleash the Power of Google Analytics (9): Advanced Segmentation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/staging.elixirrdigital.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/blog_analytics_9.jpeg\" alt=\"Google Analytics: Advanced segmentation\" width=\"463\" height=\"198\"><\/p>\n<p>Advanced segmentation is a relatively new feature of Google Analytics. It\u2019s very powerful and can help you unearth some really specific information about your site&#8217;s visitors.<\/p>\n<h3>What is an advanced segment?<\/h3>\n<p>An advanced segment is a real-time slice of the data that is in your Google Analytics account. Segments, just like filters, allow your GA profiles to contain specific groups of users, based on a set of chosen criteria.<\/p>\n<p>The advantages of advanced segments over filters are that:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>you can apply (and remove) a segment on the fly<\/li>\n<li>they don\u2019t make any permanent changes to your profile\u2019s raw data<\/li>\n<li>they work retrospectively (you can apply them to old data).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>How do I setup an advanced segment?<\/h3>\n<p>Login to your GA account and visit the dashboard for the profile that you\u2019re going to be using.<\/p>\n<p>In the top right-hand corner, just below the orange bar, it says \u2018Advanced Segments\u2019. Clicking on the \u2018all visits\u2019 button next to this will open the correct menu.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/staging.elixirrdigital.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/advanced_segment_setup.jpeg\" alt=\"Advanced Segments Setup\" width=\"480\" height=\"200\"><\/p>\n<p>You can then choose from the list of existing segments, or click \u2018create a new advanced segment\u2019 if the segment you want isn\u2019t already available.<\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s assume you\u2019re going to create a new segment. When you reach the next screen, you can select from the available dimensions and metrics panels, drag them in to the main window and use them to create the logic that will segment your data.<\/p>\n<p>As you can see in the example below, I\u2019ve created a segment that will contain visits where revenue was greater than \u00a350. To make sure your logic is right, you can hit the \u2018test segment\u2019 button. If no visits are returned by the test, it\u2019s likely your logic is wrong.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/staging.elixirrdigital.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/creating-a-segment.jpeg\" alt=\"Creating a segment\" width=\"480\" height=\"256\"><\/p>\n<h3>Some example segments<\/h3>\n<p><b>Revenue<\/b><\/p>\n<p>The example above gives us a good start. Looking at visits by revenue value can give you a good idea of how your biggest spending customers are using the site.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s also useful to look at those users that don\u2019t spend any money on your site. Doing so may throw up obvious areas where the site can be improved \u2013 you should be looking for any pages that have high bounce or exit rates.<\/p>\n<p><b>Goals <\/b><\/p>\n<p>We find the segment below really useful. It allows us to look specifically at users who started a goal process, and didn\u2019t complete it. This is particularly useful if you are tracking a shopping cart funnel, or a sign-up process.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/staging.elixirrdigital.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/goal-starts-vs-completions.jpeg\" alt=\"Goal starts versus completions\" width=\"480\" height=\"179\"><\/p>\n<p>Again, looking for high exit rates is vital. Finding where users are hitting problems and fixing any issues can help increase your conversion rates no end.<\/p>\n<p><b>Traffic sources <\/b><\/p>\n<p>Segmenting by traffic source is one of the simplest uses of advanced segments. Google Analytics gives you a selection of these to use as default.<\/p>\n<p>If you\u2019re paying for traffic to your site, it\u2019s important to make sure that every click counts. There is a pre-existing segment for paid search traffic, but if you\u2019re paying for other traffic via banners, emails, or affiliates, it\u2019s worth investigating how these users interact with your site. Here\u2019s an example:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/staging.elixirrdigital.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/email_traffic.jpeg\" alt=\"Email traffic\" width=\"480\" height=\"75\"><\/p>\n<p>With these paid traffic segments, you should be paying special attention to landing page performance and other areas of content that are heavily visited.<\/p>\n<p>You can take these segments one step further by combining them: let\u2019s look at visits from a source that didn\u2019t generate revenue.<\/p>\n<p>Expanding the above examples, we can say medium is \u2018email\u2019, AND revenue is \u20180\u2019:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/staging.elixirrdigital.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/medium-is-email-and-rev-is-0.jpeg\" alt=\"Medium is email, revenue is zero\" width=\"480\" height=\"206\"><\/p>\n<p>The more ANDs that you include in your logic, the smaller your dataset is likely to be. Make sure that you don\u2019t impose so many conditions that you end up making big decisions on tiny data sets.<\/p>\n<p><b>Experimentation is the key <\/b><\/p>\n<p>As with a lot of Google Analytics functionality, the best way to learn is to gets your hands dirty. Experimenting with segments will allow you to see what options are available and how you can imaginatively manipulate your core data to get the stats that you want!<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/staging.elixirrdigital.com\/us\/blog\/feed\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/staging.elixirrdigital.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/blog_analytics_rss_subscribe1.jpeg\" alt=\"Subscribe to our blog and follow this Analytics series\" width=\"463\" height=\"60\" border=\"0\"><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Advanced segmentation is a relatively new feature of Google Analytics. It\u2019s very powerful and can help you unearth some really specific information about your site&#8217;s visitors. What is an advanced&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"related_service":[58],"related_industry":[],"class_list":["post-1452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"card":"<article class=\"wp-component-card wp-component-card--dark wp-component-card--resource wp-component-card--post wp-component-card--full-width wp-component-card--no-image            wp-component-card--link js-card-link\n        \">\n        <div class=\"wp-component-card__content\">\n        <div class=\"wp-component-card__content-top\">\n                                                    <p class=\"wp-component-card__eyebrow\">\n                    Blog                <\/p>\n                        <a href='https:\/\/staging.elixirrdigital.com\/us\/2010\/02\/03\/elixirr-digital-blog-unleash-the-power-of-google-analytics-9-advanced-segmentation\/'>\n        <h2 class='wp-component-card__title'>\n            Elixirr Digital Blog Unleash the Power of Google Analytics (9): Advanced Segmentation\n        <\/h2>\n    <\/a>        <\/div>\n                    <div class=\"wp-component-card__content-bottom\">\n                                    <div class=\"wp-component-card__description wysiwyg\">\n                        Advanced segmentation is a relatively new feature of Google Analytics. It\u2019s very powerful and can help you unearth some really specific information about your site&#8217;s visitors. What is an advanced&hellip;                    <\/div>\n                                                                    <div class=\"wp-component-card__meta\">\n                                                    <p class=\"wp-component-card__date\">\n                                03 February 2010                            <\/p>\n                                                                            <div class=\"wp-component-card__terms\">\n                                                                                            <div class=\"wp-component-tags__tag\">\n                Analytics            <\/div>\n                                                                                                            <\/div>\n                                            <\/div>\n                                            <\/div>\n            <\/div>\n<\/article>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.elixirrdigital.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.elixirrdigital.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.elixirrdigital.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.elixirrdigital.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.elixirrdigital.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/staging.elixirrdigital.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1452\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.elixirrdigital.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.elixirrdigital.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.elixirrdigital.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1452"},{"taxonomy":"related_service","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.elixirrdigital.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/related_service?post=1452"},{"taxonomy":"related_industry","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.elixirrdigital.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/related_industry?post=1452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}