Audience reports in Google Analytics will help you get valuable insights regarding the characteristics of the users who visited your website or used your mobile application. This report consists of data that is associated with a user such as age and gender, different kinds of interest such as Affinity Categories, In-Market Segments, and Other Categories. This information will help you understand users better which in turn will help your marketing efforts.
This is the second in a series of blog posts about the different Audience Reports available in Google Analytics. Read the first article in the series, Audience Reports: Active Users + Cohort Analysis
User Explorer Report
The User Explorer report in Google Analytics allows you to look at individual user behavior rather than aggregate behavior. In this report, each individual user is associated with a unique User ID.
Being able to analyze and understand individual user behavior is important when you want to give the user a more personalized experience, or if you want to gain insight into a specific user experience, or need to troubleshoot a specific user experience. In contrast, analyzing and understanding aggregate behavior is helpful when managing a large campaign effort such as a campaign that targets several large geographic areas.
Sessions, Average Session Duration, Bounce Rate, Revenue, Transactions, and Goal Conversion Rate for individual users.
The User Explorer report allows us to look at an individual user’s information for Sessions, Average Session Duration, Bounce Rate, Revenue, Transactions, and Goal Conversion Rate. You can then drill deeper into a specific user ID to learn more about the user’s interaction during a given session. Diving deeper into individual users will allow you to see data like acquisition date, the channel for the user, user device and a list of activity logs that detail the actions the user took on your site during each session.
What You Can Learn from this Report
The information contained in this report gives insight that you can use to remarket, upsell for eCommerce, and identify marketing or buyer persona behavior.
Remarketing
By looking at individual session behavior, you can identify when your users don’t complete goals such as completing a purchase or a filling out and submitting a contact form. Identifying these incomplete behaviors provides you with opportunities to remarket to those users with information related to their specific experiences.
Upsell for eCommerce
The User Explorer report allows you to examine how your more valuable users interact with your website or mobile application. By understanding where these users spend their time, the paths they followed, and which promotions they clicked, you can start to personalize the users’ experience.
When you personalize your users’ experience, you begin to develop an ongoing relationship them. In turn, this relationship allows you to develop opportunities to upsell users products that are of value to them.
Identify the Behavior of each Marketing or Buyer Persona
The User Explorer report allows you to analyze the behavior of different segments of your users. These insights can help your marketing team develop marketing or buyer personas based on how these segments engage with your website or mobile app.
Demographics Reports
Knowing the age and gender composition of your users allows you to tailor your marketing campaigns and the content used on your website and mobile app. Demographic data is extremely useful when customizing website banners, language used in marketing and on your website or mobile app, ad placement and the creative content of your ads.
There are three types of demographic reports: Overview, Age, and Gender Report.
Demographics Overview Report
This report shows you the distribution of Sessions (or other key metrics) on your property by age group and gender. The default key metric is Sessions. You can also use % New Sessions, Average Session Duration, Bounce Rate, or Pages per Session.
Age Report
This report shows Acquisition, Behavior, and Conversions metrics broken down by age group. When you dive deeper into an age group, you see a further breakdown by gender, then by interest. The data does not include users under the age of 18.
Gender Report
This report shows Acquisition, Behavior, and Conversions metrics broken down by gender. When you drill deeper into a gender, you will see the breakdown by age group, then by interest.
What You Can Learn from Demographic Reports
Age and Gender data can be leveraged when creating custom segments. Demographic data is helpful when analyzing the behavior of a specific group. For example, you could analyze the data for Males ages 25-34 and then create remarketing audiences based on that group. The ability to create segments of users based on their demographics is a powerful tool because each group can have different sets of behaviors. Understanding these behaviors allows you to customize marketing campaigns and content to these specific segments.
Want to learn more about using User Explorer and Demographic Reports to take your marketing to the next level? Contact your InfoTrust Consultant today!
