Segmenting Your Visitors

by Dan Daugherty

What is "visitor segmentation"? Segmentation is simply breaking your visitors into groups and examining traffic and conversion data for those groups. In Google Analytics, you can see the number of visits, the average number of pages viewed per visit, and conversion rates for different groups of visitors (such as visitors from different cities).

You can see this information in two ways. The first way is to use the reports in the Visitors section. The second way is to use the segmentation drop down menu that appears on many reports. So, for example, you could find out how many of the visitors referred by Google came from each city. To do this, you'd go to the Referring Sites report in the Traffic Sources section and click the "Google.com" entry in the report table. In the resulting "Referring Site: google.com" report, you'd use the Segment drop down menu to select City.

Here are just a few examples.

Hola, Bonjour, Hello

Wouldn't it be great if you knew your visitors' language preferences? Imagine the possibilities. Knowing which languages your customers prefer to speak and read can dramatically increase customer satisfaction and increase return visits. Google Analytics shows you the language preferences of your visitors in the Languages report within the Visitors section.

In the report navigation, click Visitors, then Languages.

You might decide to create a separate landing page, splash page or micro site tailored to these specific languages. You might find it worthwhile to ramp up your call center or customer service department with multilingual employees.

Where do your customers live?

Let's say that you offer free shipping to anyone anywhere in the United States. Your reports show that 20 percent of your traffic comes from Canada, but that conversion rates are much lower than in the US. You might, as a result, decide to test a "Free Shipping" promotion to Canada and see if this increases conversions.

In the report navigation, click Visitors, then Map Overlay.

As you use the Map Overlay report to review conversion metrics for different cities and regions in Canada, you might be interested to see how conversion rates vary for French speakers versus English speakers in Quebec. To do this, you'd start on the Map Overlay report, and click Americas, then North America, then Canada, and finally Quebec. Then you'd select Languages from the Segment drop down menu.

20/20 Vision. Perhaps not.

What screen resolutions are most common for visitors who were referred from your blog? In the navigation, click Traffic Sources, then Referring Sites. Click the entry in the table that corresponds to your blog. A Referring Site report for your blog will appear. Now, select Screen Resolution from the Segment drop down menu.

New prospects or old friends?

How many users are new to your site, and how many are return visitors looking to buy more? This is easily answered with the New versus Returning report.

In the report navigation, click Visitors, then New vs Returning.

If most of your visitors are new, you might consider adding a newsletter signup to your site or creating a marketing initiative that targets existing customers.

The Importance of Testing

Customers tell you a great deal about themselves by the way they interact with your site. So use your web analytics and stay alert. You'll be better equipped to give your customers what they want.