Audience Segmentation Reveals Site Strengths, Weaknesses

Audience segmentation in Google Analytics is useful in showing which parts of a site are strong and which parts are weak with audiences.

By using this information, sites can develop content areas that have room for improvement with both audiences and search engines.

The “Add Segment” button appears at the top of almost every report in the software. Look above the graphic and to the right on each report overview page.

For example, go to Audience / Overview. The report has “All Users” above the graphic on the left side. To the right of All Users, click on “Add Segment”. Scroll down the list that appears and check the box next to Mobile and then click on the Apply Button.

The resulting report shows a comparison between all users and mobile-only users that visit the site.

Insights from Audience Segmentation

The analytics reveal important insights by comparing a segment such as mobile to all users. A similar option is a comparison between mobile and desktop users.

In the case of PromiseMedia.com, the report from Audience / Overview didn’t reveal anything major. But the report in Acquisition / All Traffic / Source / Medium did reveal some useful information.

It showed that Google Organic — by far the largest source of traffic to this site — had a lower ratio of mobile to all users than other sources of audience.

The low ratio meant that Google liked the site’s desktop version more than the mobile version for some reason. It was not showing the site as much in mobile searches as in desktop searches.

An analysis of the mobile version with PageSpeed Insights and other tools led to changes and an improvement in scores and traffic.

The same type of report helps a site manager to understand other Google segments such as organic traffic, paid traffic, referral traffic and new users.

Goals and Segments

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Google Analytics has a tool for users to create goals such as X pages per visit, X transactions or X visits to certain pages or sections on the site.

Go to Admin at the top of the page and Goals in the list under View to create a new goal. Once a goal is created, it also becomes a Segment.

Site management now becomes more powerful with the potential to understand the most important segments of an audience and how they contribute value to a site.

With this knowledge, the site manager can define specific tasks to improve site performance and prioritize tasks based on their value. For that reason, it also is a great time management tool.

Don’t settle for just a total audience number. Use segments to identify audience niches and make specific and highly-targeted improvements to a site.