April 16, 2014

Track A Unique User’s Experience In Google Analytics

Determining if a relationship exists between a website and its visitors is critically important in your marketing efforts.  Google’s new Universal Analytics provides functionality allowing you to track visitor engagement and cohesively understand their interactions.  Let’s explore the Google Analytics feature that can help your day-to-day digital marketing planning, engagement and tracking.

User ID Feature

We hate it when a consumer visits one of our client’s website from multiple devices (phone, tablet, desktop) and their analytics tool counts those visits as multiple unique visitors, not one?  As a company who runs digital marketing campaigns for a living, we can honestly say that we loathe it.  When operating online campaigns like remarketing, we want the ability to show how previous website visitors engage in content a second, third or fourth visit.  

Google’s User ID feature in Google Universal Analytics allows you to identify related actions by one individual on multiple devices.  This feature tracks a user’s id and clues you into when a consumer comes back to your website and how they engage in the content you are providing.  The User ID feature allows you to connect, organize and sort data from all sessions to comprehend a user’s conversion process from beginning to end.  It also gives you the ability to identify which device provides the best user experience on your website.  Receiving a holistic view of your user’s experience is incredibly important when planning your digital marketing efforts, and User ID is one tool to help you out.     

There are some limitations to using this new feature.  You need a way to create unique IDs and push them to Google Analytics.  You can normally provide this through some sort of contact form or sign-in form.  This feature is only available in Google’s Universal Analytics and not Google’s Classic Analytics.  Most organizations utilize the classic version, but Universal Analytics became available to everyone in April.

Tracking visits by the same person as a unique visit skews data, and you can’t determine if any relationships or additional engagement exist.  With Google’s User ID, you can determine cohesive interactions.  Are you interested in learning more about Google’s User ID?  Let us know or you can use Google’s User ID set up overview for setup guidance.

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