Google Analytics 4 Segments (how to create and use them)

in this video i will explain what segments in google analytics 4 are where can you use them and where you cannot [Music] hey my name is julius and welcome to analytics mania youtube channel where you can learn google tag manager and google analytics and if you want to stay up to date with ga4 consider subscribing segments in google analytics allow you to slice your data and analyze a certain subset for example you can analyze your checkout process by comparing your mobile and desktop users segmenting data is the key to unlocking some powerful insights and in this video i will show you how to create segments where can you use them and where you cannot let's take a look to get started with segments first you should go to the explorer section on the left sidebar by the way this year alone google analytics 4 interface has changed multiple times so if you see some drastically different things in your interface compared to my video then please check the description of the video because i may have some other piece of content that covers those changes if you cannot find anything there then check the comments section and if you still cannot find your answers then post a comment and let me know about it there is a chance that i already have some piece of content that will help you anyway back to the main topic so you can apply segments in various exploration reports let's start with freeform i will click right here and then i will see some predefined report with city and device category right now this report shows the data of all visitors who have visited my site in this period of time and if you want to narrow down your data set one of the options can be segments here you will find five predefined segments but if you want you can dive deeper and create your own first of all let's try to add one of these predefined segments so you can do that by double clicking on any of these for example let's see the data only of the us traffic and then after you do the double click that segment will appear right here the other option could be just to drag and drop it and once you add that segment right here you will also see an indication in the table itself so here you can see that these are the numbers of the us traffic and you can see how that segment is using different categories of devices and in some reports for example this one as well you can add multiple segments at the same time and compare their data so let's say that i want to compare us versus canada however there is no canada segment right here therefore i can create a new one and you can do that by clicking plus icon right here then you can select the type of segment that you want to create is it a user segment session or event segment i will later in this video explain the differences between these segments but right now let's take a look at the user segment so i will click it and then i want to include all users when country id i will select exact match and then canada and i will then click apply and finally i will have to name this segment let's say canada keep in mind that this segment right now will be applied to this particular exploration report so it will not be available in other exploration reports and if you want to use that there then you will have to build a segment from scratch and once you create that segment it is automatically added right here and now you have multiple columns however this report looks quite crowded for example we don't need city in this case because let's say that i just want to see how many active users do we get from each country and based on the device category so what i could do is first of all i can remove the city because i don't need that and then instead i can move the device category from columns to rows by the way if you want to learn more about how to work with exploration reports i will post several links to other tutorials below this video so now i have a very clear table of how many users do i have from us from canada and i have split that based on the device category also for example i could add transactions metric from the variables column to the tab settings and then i will see active users and the number of transactions another useful metric right here could be revenue so in the metrics column right here i could click plus icon and then enter revenue and then let's say total revenue click apply then finally i will have to add that total revenue from here to here also one more way how you can add items to this column is just to click right here and then you will have the list that you have right here so click total revenue and now i have a table in fact i could zoom out my browser window to see everything in one view so i can see how many users get transactions total revenue and i see that based on one segment the other segment and then total numbers so this part right here i mean totals they show the sum of all columns and all segments that we have right here so we have us and canada but what if we want to compare let's say one segment which is let's say us to all the users that we get unfortunately if you take a look right here we don't have all users segment so we will have to create one maybe in the future they will offer one segment that is all users but right now we have to do some workaround and you can create a segment of all users by clicking the plus icon right here and then click user segment and then enter the name which is for example all users and here we have to add some condition that will match any user that has visited our site and that can be done by entering the following condition so click here and then enter page and keep looking for page path and here is page path click it and then we can say that if page path contains slash then we want to include those users in the segment and that will always be true because in this case what are we telling is that if a visitor sent any event on any page that contains the slash and spoiler alert slash is in every page url or actually in every page path then this condition will be met in fact we can even click this checkbox right here to make sure that if at any point in time a visitor has visited a url of which page path contains slash then we will include that and here you will see a preview of the size of that segment and you can see that this matches 100 of all sessions now click save and apply and now i can compare the us numbers to all user numbers and we can already see that even though us traffic makes only about 40 of all traffic 96 of traffic is coming from the us so these were several of the examples where you can apply segments but now let's take a closer look at what kind of functions and features do you have in segments so let's click on this plus icon and let's take a look what we have so first of all as i've mentioned before you can create three types of segments one is user segment the other one is session segment and then the other one is event segment if you have worked in the past with universal analytics which is the older version you should already be familiar with user segments and session segments however there is a very welcome addition in ge4 which is called event segment because this one was not available in the past now let me explain what do these segments mean and how are they different let's say that we have one user and that user visited our site twice the first session consisted of two pageview events and one click and the second session was page view then add to cart and then checkout now let's say that i want to create a user segment where an event name was add to cart so in other words i want to create a segment of users that have added product to a cart at any point in time so if i create a segment like this then it means that events of both sessions will be included in my analysis so even though in this session no add to cart was done i am right now looking for users not sessions therefore my exploration report will be showing data that is coming from the user not from a particular session so in other words it will match all sessions if at least one session had add to cart now let's say that i want to create a session segment and i want to include only those sessions where there was at least one add to cart event now in that case only events of this session will be included in the report and these page views or clicks or whatever they will be ignored so as i've already said these two types of segments were also available in universal analytics but what if you only want to include certain events in your report and nothing else for example what if i want to see only add to cart data i don't want to include page views or checkouts i just want to see add to cart events for that you would need to create an event segment so if i create an event segment where the event name is add to cart that report with that segment will show only add to cart data let's take a look what other features can we have in segments click on the plus icon again right here and then click on user segment here you can add separate condition groups so for example here you can have one condition then you can have another condition for example let's say that i want to see data of users who have added anything to cart and also they have started checkout so i enter the word check and since in this property we have g for e-commerce setup then i have the begin checkout event as well and then you can set whether this should happen within the same session or across all sessions of any user so here for example i could have this configured within the same session and then as i've mentioned i could add another condition and change the scope right here you can add more conditions by clicking here or you can remove them by clicking this trash icon another thing that is really useful in user segments is sequences so if you have ever worked with universal analytics you should already be familiar with them because they were also available in segments right there so if you want to add a sequence and you don't need any other condition groups you should first remove your existing conditions so click this icon and then click add sequence so now you can include users who have made certain sequence of events in the previous example where i had two events that was add to cart and begin checkout the order of those events did not matter if for some reason the visitor could send the begin checkout event first and only then add to cart that user's data would still be included in the report but here we can define a specific order in which those events should happen so for example let's say that we want to track how many users have viewed a promotion on a site or in other words saw some banner on your website so i will click this view promotion event and then made a purchase let's say within 30 minutes and this is where another cool feature in google analytics 4 is introduced so i can add here to add new step and then i can say that hey within 30 minutes of viewing that promotion a purchase should happen so i will click right here to add new condition and we'll add the purchase event name and then click purchase right here and then on the sidebar the loading will start and eventually you will see how many sessions will be included in this segment so in this segment we will include all sessions of users who had at least one session where the visitor viewed a promotion and then made a purchase within 30 minutes on the right side of the segment creation window you will also see a checkbox which says build an audience so mostly audiences are used in google analytics for for two reasons the first one would be to retarget those audiences with google ads because you can create an audience and then import it to google ads but this is a topic for another video also you can use audiences in other reports outside of explorations because segments are for explorations only and if you want to use that particular segment in other places you will have to build audiences what you have probably already noticed is that in this section we are including users that match certain criteria but if you want to exclude certain users you should then use the exclude section right here where you can add additional conditions or maybe sequences and those visitors will be excluded from the segment now let's take a look at other things that are worth to mention so let's go back i think that i am missing actually is that in session segments at least right now when i'm recording this video you cannot add sequences so if i want to narrow down to certain sessions where a particular sequence of events occurred unfortunately i cannot do that i really hope that this will happen in the future and maybe when you're watching this video this is already implemented but right now sequence segments are only available for user segments and if we go back right now you will also see another section which is suggested segments because when you create a custom segment you will start from scratch but there are some suggested segments as well and there are things like recently active users or people who have made a purchase there are also some templates right here but also here is one of the things where machine learning and all that ai thing that was promoted when g4 launched so here is one of the areas where that part is used so let's go to the predictive part and here you will see some segments like people who will likely buy within the next seven days so you could build a segment by clicking this and later you can even click right here build an audience and then use that audience for retargeting in google ads then there are some other options like people who will likely churn or in other words they will stop using your services or product within the next seven days than people who spend the most in the last four weeks and so on however keep in mind that this is not for small businesses there are some thresholds that must be met in order to use these segments and maybe even use them as audiences below this video i will post a link to a documentation of google analytics 4 where you can see the requirements or in other words the prerequisites for the predictive metrics to work so for example here you would need to have at least 1 000 returning users who have made a purchase and at least 1 000 users who did not purchase within the last 28 days so as you can see you would need to have a high volume of purchases in order to have those purchase probability and other metrics that are used in the predictive audiences if you want to learn more i will post a link to this below the video and that is how you can create and use segments in google analytics 4. i wish that we could use segments in any report not just explorations but at the same time i'm really happy that we finally got event segment if you found this video useful hit the thumbs up button below the video because it helps me continue working on this channel also if you want to learn more about google tag manager and google analytics 4 consider subscribing to this channel my name is julius this is analytics mania and i'll see you in the next video [Music] you

Channel: Analytics Mania - Google Tag Manager & Analytics

Views: 3,960

Keywords: google analytics 4, google analytics, google analytics 4 setup, google analytics tutorial, google analytics 4 property, google analytics 4 tutorial, google analytics 4 audiences, google analytics 4 segments, how to use google analytics 4, segment data in google analytics 4

Id: Zk65ZbJEAxA

Length: 14min 58sec (898 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 05 2021