How to Use Google Analytics Advanced Segments for Modern Insights

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) provides new and flexible ways to understand your website or app users by enabling you to track how different audience subsets behave. One effective method is to use an “advanced segment.” Learn how to define and analyze advanced segments to explore customers’ behavioral patterns, personalize marketing strategies, and make data-driven business decisions. 

What are Google Analytics advanced segments?

An advanced segment is a subset of your data based on specific conditions. You can define these conditions to filter and analyze particular subgroups. In turn, it enables you to see differences in how audience members with different characteristics behave. For example, you could look at users from a particular city, users who purchased your product during a certain month, or users who repeatedly visited your product page but haven’t yet made a purchase.

One of the benefits of advanced segments in GA4 is that you can customize multiple criteria to create nuanced customer groups. This way, you can create tailored analyses, looking for patterns that might be hidden in bigger user groups. You could go beyond just looking at a group of users within a specific age range to look at users in that age group who also reside in a specific geographic region, who access your site on a mobile device, and who have added an item to their cart at least once.

What are the three levels of segments in Google Analytics?

In GA4, the three levels of segments include event, session, and user segments. User segments include users who have interacted with your site. Event segments are events triggered on your site (e.g., all purchases made during a particular season). Session segments are subsets of sessions, like all sessions for the week after you launched a new marketing campaign.

Examples of audience segmentations in GA4

Accurately defining your audience is essential to gaining the insights you need to make empowered business decisions. If you don’t have a clear idea of the audience you want to look at, some examples of places to start include:

• Engaged versus non-engaged users: Compare which users took the time to watch videos on your site, engage with content, and generally respond positively to your efforts. You can go one step further to define highly engaged users, such as those who downloaded an eBook.

• Purchasers versus non-purchasers: You can compare users who purchased to those who added to their cart and left the site without purchasing. This can help you create campaigns to re-target cart abandoners. 

• Repeat visitors versus one-time users: Compare those who returned to your site multiple times to those who visited once and didn’t return. This can help you identify which users your current marketing and products speak to, and who you might still need to target.

GA4 vs. Universal Analytics

Several updates separate GA4 from its predecessor, Universal Analytics (UA). For one, UA used session-based data, while GA4 uses an event-based model. This means GA4 refines data by tracking user interactions by individual events instead of grouping by session. Another difference is that GA4 uses artificial intelligence, offering the ability to model behaviors and predict performance, without compromising user privacy.

How to create and use Google Analytics advanced segments

By creating advanced segments in GA4, you can isolate and analyze user, session, or event groups of interest. After setting up your Google Analytics account, create and use advanced segments by following these steps.

1. Access the Explore section.

On the left-hand menu, click Explore and then select your exploration type. You can choose a variety of exploration options, depending on your goals:

• Free-form: See insights in a crosstab layout and apply different visualization styles.

• Cohort: Compare the behavior of different user groups by attribute.

• Funnel: Visualize users’ steps and identify over- or under-performing audience groups.

• Segment overlap: See how user groups relate to one another.

• User exploration: Take a closer look at the users in each segment.

• Path exploration: Visualize user action sequences.

• User lifetime: Define user lifetime value based on their behaviors.

As you begin using Google Analytics advanced segments, the Free form option is a good place to start.

2. Create a new segment.

Once you define your exploration type, click the + icon next to the Segments tab. You can choose from User, Session, and Event segment options. Then, click Add new condition.

3. Define segment conditions. 

Now you’ll have the option to build your segment by applying filters. You can start with a suggested segment or specify criteria relevant to your research question. Before defining specific filters, you can choose condition options like attribution, demographics, geography, event, and general in the drop-down menu.

You can add multiple conditions using AND logic to narrow your segment further. This means all specified conditions within the same group must be met for a user to be included in your segment. You can use OR logic if you want to broaden this segment to include users who meet one of several conditions. For example, you might define users who favorited an item OR added an item to the cart. 

You can also opt for condition groups. By clicking Add condition group, you can create separate blocks of logic evaluated using OR between groups. If you want to include users who meet one set of conditions or another, this is a great way to do so. You might look at users who added a product to their cart but didn’t ultimately buy anything, OR users who returned to your page at least five times without purchasing anything. 

4. Explore your insights.

When you’re done, click Save and apply. Once you do this, your segment will be under Segment Comparisons in Settings. You can drag and drop it to your analysis to compare segments to the overall site traffic.

Advanced segmentation techniques in GA4

Beyond customer characteristics like age, location, and purchase history, you can refine your segmentation to more nuanced conditions, like sequences of events or predictive metrics.

Sequence conditions

Sequence conditions let you define users based on the order in which they complete actions. For example, you can segment users who visited your product page, added an item to the cart, and then purchased the item. Or, you could look at users who added an item to the cart, left the page, then returned and added the item to their cart again. You can look at two types of sequences:

• Directly followed: The defined path must happen in order, with no interim steps.

• Indirectly followed: The defined path can include interim steps, as long as defined steps occurred.

Metric conditions

With metric conditions, you can define segment users based on predictive measures like predicted purchase probability or predicted revenue. This feature uses machine learning to assess your user base and find patterns based on the behavior of similar users. 

To use this feature, you have to train a predictive model. The algorithm needs a minimum of positive and negative examples to identify patterns accurately. You can then use your model to define segments like “purchase probability is above the 85th percentile” and so on to create user groups. 

Troubleshooting common segmentation issues in GA4

If you’re having trouble with your segmentation, you may be running into one of a few common errors. Consider the following examples and how to troubleshoot them.

• Your segment is not working correctly: Check that you picked the appropriate group: users, sessions, or events. In addition, check if your exploration contains conflicting or unsupported dimension pairings.

• Your segment isn’t appearing in reports: In GA4, your Explorations will not appear in Reports. You can access your segments and information in the Exploration section. 

• Your predictive model isn’t working: For the model to be able to build, you need at least 1,000 positive and negative examples over a seven-day period in the last 28 days. In addition, check that the model quality meets the criteria.

• Your sequence disappeared: Condition groups appear above sequences. If you add a condition group and it disappears, you can scroll up to find your sequence.

Limitations of GA4 advanced segments

While GA4 offers advanced segmentation tools, keeping a few limitations in mind can help you clearly understand how you can—and can’t—use this technology. For one, you can only create 10 segments per exploration, which can be restrictive if you compare multiple audience types. You’ll need to create multiple explorations or adjust segment definitions to compare more segments.

In addition, the machine learning capabilities require adequate historical data and user activity to function effectively. If you have a small data set or lack engagement, you may need to expand your segment definitions to take full advantage of this option.

Summary of steps for advanced segments in GA4

Using GA4, you can gain deeper insights in the Exploration section, comparing user groups and behaviors. To create your first advanced segment on Google Analytics, follow these steps:

1. Access the Explore section.

2. Create a new segment.

3. Define segment conditions.

4. Add advanced conditions like metrics and sequence conditions.

5. Explore insights under Segment Comparisons.

Learn more about Google Analytics on Coursera

By creating Google Analytics advanced segments, you can explore the behavior of different user groups to refine your marketing strategies and better target your customer base. 

Continue to learn the power of Google Analytics with the Google Data Analytics Professional Certificate on Coursera. In this eight-course series, you can explore how to visualize and present data findings in dashboards, presentations, and commonly used visualization platforms.