Segmentation of web analytics data in Google Analytics

Segmentation is a technique that is used to help get to more detailed information on your site’s performance, which is done by slicing and dicing your existing data until you get only the information that’s relevant to your cause. A simple example is the conversion rate. You’ve established that your site’s conversion rate is 3%. Great, but that gives you very little information. By using segmentation you can determine the individual conversion rates for separate streams of traffic, which gives you a clearer direction as to which parts of your online marketing efforts need to be stepped up.

As an example, you can determine the conversion rates from the traffic you get from search engines vs. PPC vs. Advertising campaigns. One level deeper into this segmentation means you can find out the conversion rates for individual (natural) search keywords to see for which keywords your SEO efforts are paying off. The same can be done for PPC keywords, as well as individual advertising campaigns and each individual ad you run.

Google Analytics offers you a bunch of tools to help you segment your data. Most reports offer you the Segment option, just below the report’s graph, which allows you to analyze conversions for individual referrers, site paths followed for particular keywords, discover through which pages most visitors convert and where they came from, etc. etc.

Slice and dice your report data and find out more about your visitors and what action they take on your site that’s of value (and why, where from, etc. etc.)!