Gold Medal to Custom Variables

On this occasion I have to give the gold medal to Custom Variables, yes, I've been using Custom Variables in Google Analytics since October last year. I can honestly say they have been the solution to almost every problem (and the answer for every excuse presented to me for not using Google Analytics). Most importantly, after implementing the solution and trying it, they are happy with the results!

Usually I would talk about the coding and the implementation in detail but this time I just want to list and expand on ideas for using custom variables as a solution for some of your needs.

1. First and Last Click Attribution

By default Google Analytics presents the source and medium of the conversion based on the last click that generated the conversion. However, many clients want to know which one was the final touch point that generated the purchase, enrolment, download, etc.. Using custom variables at visitor level we can obtain such information.

Imagine you have different campaigns (not only AdWords campaigns) for a specific product. If visitors come to your site for the first time as a result of an email campaign, you could set two Custom Variables; CVSource and CVMedium. To make this work you will need to add a piece of code to check if the Custom Variable is set or not. If the CVSource and CVMedium are undefined you will need to set them, otherwise don't do anything.

Now suppose a visitor has spent some time on your site but he/she doesn't complete the goal e.g buy the product. Then a few days later, the same visitor comes to your site from a link posted on Twitter and this time he/she completes the purchase. In a normal scenario you would see the purchase came from Twitter which is true but you want to know which campaign generated his/her first visit and maybe analyse why the first one didn't work whereas the second source did?

Using Custom Variables and the technique I outlined above (remember no excuses) you can determine which initial touchpoint started the momentum toward the final conversion. You don't have to give 100% of the credit for the conversion to the last source, you can split it between the first and last source to see which is better and how the campaigns work together.

2. Sections - Categories

Sometimes you have different content to present to visitors and different goals classified by categories in your website. These categories could be presented as part of the menu, lists, sub-menu, etc. You could then set Custom Variables for a session level or in some cases for a visitor level. As a result you can identify the category that has been visited most much more easily than filtering by content in your content report in Google Analytics. This also allows you to check which categories are driving more visitor to complete a particular goal and which ones are the most effective for converting or completing goals.

3. Segmentation by Type of Information

3.1 Demographic

Many sites use forms to collect information required for purchasing products or services. Awareness of trends in the market and understanding customer/client needs are important to targeting the right audience at the right time with a campaign to promote a product or service.

Imagine your marketing team has created two new ads; one targeting young females and the other targeting families. If the customer already has a login and has previously entered information such as age, gender, income and occupation this makes it easy to segment them and target the ads.

3.2 Location

Not all the classifications defined for a location are available by default in Google Analytics because they are not standard for each country. You can see your reports segmented by ontinent, Country/Territory, Sub Continent Region and City but what if you would like to see that information classified by State/Province or by smaller locations inside the City e.g. by suburb. Use Custom Variables! It's up to you to find creative ways of capturing the specific locations your visitors are coming from but if you can access that data you can assign that value to your Custom Variable in a visitor or session scope.

4. Comments and Rating

If you have implemented a plugin or tool to add comments to your articles for example in a blog or rating a product or service. You could use Custom Variables to see how many commentators rate your product, service or blog post 'good' or 'bad'.

Let's say you set a Custom Variable call Ratings_Feedback with two values 'Good' or 'Bad'. Then, each time someone rates a particular element in your website the value will be stored in the Custom Variable. You can then look at your reports and find out: how many ratings you have; how many visitors out of the total using the plugin tool; and how many rate a specific product or service as 'good' or 'bad' etc.

I have found using Custom Variables very interesting and effective for all sorts of challenges, and great for insights into using the e-commerce tracking code and/or event tracking. My final suggestion, before you start implementing Custom Variables across your site is to analyse your needs very carefully. Try to find if you can get the data you want to see with the default dimensions and metrics provided by the UI.

If it is not possible to do it with the standard tracking code, e-commerce tracking code, virtual pageviews and/or event tracking, then take time to define and design the use of the Custom Variable. By following my advice (remember no excuses) you are sure to get the right information you need to segment and analyse your data for great results!

I hope sharing my ideas for using Custom Variables will help you experience the benefits of this excellent feature provided by Google Analytics, and of course make your reports easier, more effective and more impressive!