Deep-Dive: Segment Overlap in Advanced Analysis

This is a follow on post to my first Introducing Advanced Analysis and my second deep-diving on the Funnels technique. If you haven’t checked those ones out yet, do so first. In this post, I want to walk through getting the most out of the Segment Overlap technique in Advanced Analysis. The Segment Overlap technique in Advanced Analysis is exciting for many reasons. In my opinion, it really stretches the capabilities of Google Analytics and takes us into a whole new realm of discovery and actionability. What do I mean by that? Highlights: Include up to 3 segments to compare visually and via table what the overlap of users (or whichever metric you desire) is Breakdown this overlap by a desired dimension. For example, breakdown the overlap of Organic Traffic
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Deep-Dive: Funnels in Advanced Analysis

This is a follow on post to my first post Introducing Advanced Analysis. If you haven’t checked that one out yet, do so first. In this post, I want to walk through getting the most out of the Funnels technique in Advanced Analysis. The Funnels technique in Advanced Analysis is powerful for many reasons. It was inspired by Custom Funnels in Analytics 360, which has been one of the highest rated features in Analytics 360 since it’s launch. Custom Funnels let you create unique funnels based on events or pageviews including up to 5 steps, and allow you to create a segment from the drop-off to remarket to. Funnels in Advanced Analysis takes that functionality further and extends it to make a tool that is incredibly flexible and powerful for
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Introduction to Advanced Analysis

Google Analytics recently launched their new Advanced Analysis feature set into public beta for all Google Analytics 360 users. To say I’m excited about this launch would be an understatement. I’m beyond thrilled! This feature set is near and dear to me as I’ve been hard at work helping build it for quite some time now. In addition to my personal ties to it though, the practitioner in me is excited because the ability to slice and dice data, find interesting segments, analyze funnels, compare segments, and discover insights goes well beyond anything we’ve had in Google Analytics before. In short, it’s REALLY DAMN COOL! The tool launched with three techniques to help you take your analysis to the next level: Exploration: this is a table driven report that allows
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What’s New in Google Analytics for Firebase

Recently, I posted an Overview of Google Analytics for Firebase. If you haven’t read that article yet, I’d suggest starting there. Next, I want to recap some of the exciting new features announced this year at Google I/O (May, 2018). The first, and this is a big one, is ‘Project-level Reporting’. What does that mean? Previously, In Google Analytics for Firebase, you would have individual Apps within Projects. Each app would have it’s own reporting section (you would toggle between iOS and Android via a dropdown on the top left to choose which version of your app you wanted to analyze). What does this mean to you? Now, instead of having to toggle between apps to analyze your data separately, you can analyze it together. Of course, you can still
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Anomaly Detection in Google Analytics Intelligence

We’ve had ‘Custom Alerts’ in Google Analytics for a very long time. They used to look like this: They recently got an facelift and now look nicer, but the data is still the same: I’ve used these alerts for years to help me detect changes in traffic patterns as they occur (by sending an email alert) rather than at a later point during analysis. They still serve this purpose well. But when it comes to understanding what is driving an anomaly, or even detecting it and it’s degree without previously setting up an alert, the new Anomaly Detection features in Google Analytics Intelligence really shine. Anomaly Detection in Google Analytics Intelligence helps us answer a very important question (we may not have even known we had): “What are the statistically
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New Data Retention Policies in Google Analytics

This post reflects my personal thoughts (me = Krista Seiden) and in no way speaks on behalf of Google or Google Analytics. I’m not a lawyer and am not pretending to offer any sort of legal advice with the below post.   Now that the legal statements are out of the way, I want to be sure that my readers have the same understanding of some of the new settings taking effect in Google Analytics on May 25th, 2018 as I do. Starting May 25th, new data retention policies for Google Analytics will take effect. What is Data Retention you might ask? It’s the term used to describe the amount of time (in months in this case) that Google Analytics will retain property data beyond standard reporting. What is ‘Standard
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Using Event Tagging for Form Field Tracking

Many, many websites have forms on them: Subscription forms, Contact forms, Sign-up forms, etc. Understanding how users to your site or app interact with your form, and how they are succeeding through the form, or dropping out of the form, is an important key performance indicator (KPI) for your business to track. There are a lot of tools out there that have a specific purpose for form field tracking, but why use a separate tool when you can do it well with one you are already using? Using Google Analytics Event Tracking is a great way to track form field interaction on your sites and to create fallout funnels to understand success or lack there of for your forms. The benefit of using a tool you already have is data
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Defining Growth Marketing

Growth may just be the most over-hyped term of modern marketing. Yes, I said it. It’s overrated. That being said, there are some interesting distinctions that have evolved as the field of Growth Marketing has evolved. But first, I must share one of my favorite definitions of Growth Hacking to date from Dana DiTomaso: While I don’t necessarily agree that all Growth tactics are marketing without strategy, I do think there is some truth in the statement that the term was invented as a way to make marketing, especially the more quantitative parts of marketing, seem cooler. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, I have one other thing to say: Please, for the love of god, DON’T call it ‘Growth Hacking’. I talked Growth Marketing with my
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An Overview of Google Analytics for Firebase

In this post, I’m going to walk you through an overview of the Google Analytics for Firebase platform, including an overview of the out of the box reports you get with the Firebase SDK. What: Google Analytics for Firebase is the latest mobile analytics tracking platform from Google. This is meant as the next generation of mobile app tracking, taking the place of the Google Analytics Services SDK (this SDK is still supported in maintenance mode but is not being built on). Why: The Google Analytics Services SDK was built off of the web analytics model of Google Analytics. Google Analytics for Firebase (GA4F) was built from the ground up as an app-centric analytics platform, enabling it to track app type actions in a much more intuitive way When: Firebase Analytics
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