One of the great things about us is that we're unique. From faces to fingerprints to talents and experiences, we all have thousands of things that define what makes us different.
Online, and especially in analytics software, all those differences blend together and disappear. This ends up causing your management to give you the face we see below -- so don't settle for boring results online!
Use advanced segments, and if you haven't used them before, start as soon as you finish reading. You'll not only be preserving an essential, defining characteristic of humanity -- you'll also be making much better decisions, and I guarantee those decisions will make your boss happier!
Google Analytics uses the term "advanced segments"; your web analytics software may use filters or custom reports for the same feature. Using advanced segments, all of your reporting will become dramatically more actionable. Conversion rate, bounce rate, average order value -- you name the metric -- I promise you it will take on a whole new meaning if you apply some smart segmenting to it. Take a look at conversion report rate below:
At the top, we see the advanced segments menu. This drop down is available across all reports, and many useful segments are prebuilt. To compare new, returning, and paid visitors, simply check the boxes and click apply. A few seconds later, and suddenly conversion rate means a whole lot more. In this example, returning visitors are converting at 10% -- if your data looks like this, pat yourself on the back for doing a wonderful job with repeat business! This is a rough but promising indicator that we're making customers very happy.
The biggest loser in this report is paid search traffic, which has only 1/3 of the conversion that our returning visitors do! While paid search conversion rates are typically lower than those of repeat customers, applying advanced segments to this report shows us that we should at least take a look at our ads, targeting, and landing pages. If we find problems and bring the conversion rate to just half of our repeat business, we've improved return on paid marketing efforts by 50%. Depending on your volume, that's thousands or millions of dollars per year.
Now go start segmenting -- there's a gold mine in your data waiting to be discovered.