Understanding the behavior of the users as they interact with one’s site or application is complex. It is not an easy task to understand the exact pattern of visitors who convert or are likely to convert in the future.

With Google Analytics, it has become easier to understand the user behavior and helps the marketers to understand the type of visitors that are more likely to convert; the duration the users, who come with the intentions of purchasing, spend on their site; the average age of their users and so on.

Understanding the user behavior helps the marketers to analyze and identify the audience segment that has the potential to accomplish their (marketers’) business goals and help them (marketers) with their future targeting and overall marketing.

In Google Analytics, the user data is captured using either first-party cookies, randomly generated IDs, or an SDK for mobile apps. With additional instrumentation, website owners can have a deep understanding of how users interact with individual application screens or pages on their websites. They also have the option of adding further instrumentation to capture more detailed interactions where needed.

 

Measurement planning

To guide their analytics implementation, every business must create a measurement plan. The measurement plan includes :

• Overall objectives of the business including the strategies and tactics that support the objectives
• KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to measure the success of the strategies and tactics
• Segmenting marketing activities and most valuable users to have a better understanding of what drives success
• Targets for the KPIs to determine whether the business is able to reach its goals

This measurement plan helps to focus on the data related to the business measurement needs. To gather the information, it is necessary for the businessmen to discuss their business objectives with those people in their organization that will be using the data.

To understand the user behavior more accurately there are some features that should be reflected on.

 

Goal

Goals represent those activities that contribute to the success of one’s business. Goals determine how effectively one’s application or website supports one’s business objectives. Configuring one’s goals is the most basic part of any digital analytics measurement plan. Having well-configured goals enable Analytics to provide the businessmen with critical information to better understand if their users are completing the behaviors they want the users to complete. Without this data, the evaluation of the effectiveness of their online business is really impossible.

 

Enhanced eCommerce

With enhanced eCommerce tracking it becomes easy for businesses to measure the number of transactions and the revenue that is generated by their website or mobile app. It helps them understand the user behavior across the users’ entire online shopping experiences which include product impressions, viewing product details, adding a product to the cart, checkout process initiation, transactions, and refunds.

 

Custom dimensions and custom metrics

Custom dimensions and custom metrics act as default dimensions and metrics in the businessmen’s Analytics account. They can use the custom dimensions and metrics to collect and analyze such data that are not automatically collected by the Analytics. Custom dimensions and custom metrics allow businessmen to combine Analytics data with non-Analytics data which provides deeper insights into user behavior.

 

Custom dimensions and custom metrics reporting

After configuring and collecting custom dimensions and metrics, they become available through the user reporting interface. They are available in custom reports and for use with advanced segments. In standard reports, custom dimensions can be used as secondary dimensions.

 

Active users

The first thing any business wants to keep a track of is the number of users interested. If the number of interested users is up to the expectations, then the business is going to be an effective one. If the number of interested users is below expectations, the businesses need to assess their marketing efforts to analyze if they are targeting the right audience. And if all the marketing and social buzz are positive, the reason for the fewer number of users might be the technical hurdles for the users with the site or app design.

 

Cohort analysis

The cohort can be defined as a group of users sharing common characteristics. Cohort analysis helps businessmen understand the behavior of component groups of users apart from their user population as a whole. Cohort analysis can be useful for the examination of individual cohorts to gauge response to short-term marketing efforts such as emails, track the changes in the behavior and performance of individual groups of users on daily basis, and organizing users into groups based on the common characteristics and examine their behavior.

 

Behavior flow report

Behavior flow report predicts the paths traveled by the users from one page or event to the next. This report widely helps the businessmen to determine the contents that keep the users engaged with their site. It also helps them identify the potential content or usability issues.

It is very important for businesses to know about their users as it helps them to make smart choices about their website, application, or Software as a Service (SaaS) mobile application development investments. Besides that, understanding user behavior helps them improve the user experience, filter features, and contents and build such products that are useful for the users.