(upbeat music)
- The default reports in Google Analytics help you monitor
key business metrics.
But Google Analytics has another great tool
for even deeper analysis called Explore.
Explore is a collection of advanced analysis techniques
that go beyond standard reports, to uncover more insights
about customer behavior.
Explorations, which are the reports you can build
within explore, give you access to data
and analytical techniques that aren't available
in standard reports such as funnels and pathing.
You can use explorations to explore data
in depth and answer complex questions.
Explore can help you to do things like quickly
perform ad hoc queries, easily configure and switch
between techniques, sort, refine and drill down
into the data.
Focus on the most relevant data by using things
like filters, segments, and breakdowns
and create segments and audiences.
Let's start by showing you around.
Click Explore in the main left nav,
you'll have the option to start a new exploration
from scratch or a template or open in an existing report.
Let's open the freeform report template.
You'll see three distinct areas from left to right.
First you have the variables pane.
This panel gives you access to the dimensions, metrics
and segments that you can use in an exploration.
You can also change the timeframe of the exploration here
and give it a name.
Next, you have the tab settings pane.
Use this panel to configure the whiteboard area
on the canvas.
You can select the technique add items
from the variables panel and configure technique
specific options.
We'll come back to techniques in just a moment.
You can also use this tab to compare segments
select breakdowns in values, and apply filters.
And finally, the canvas which is this large area
that displays all of your data.
The Canvas can have multiple tabs letting you
use multiple techniques in a single exploration.
Let's click the explore button to return
to the main exploration page so we can review
the various techniques that are available.
First is the freeform exploration.
This technique gives you the freedom to explore your data
with several different types of visualization styles,
including tables, bar charts, pie charts, line charts,
scatter plots, and geo maps.
The funnel exploration will help you visualize
the steps users take to complete tasks on your site
or your app and see how you can optimize the user experience
and identify over or underperforming audiences.
The path exploration will help you visualize
the path that users take as they interact
with your website or your app.
The segment overlap report shows you how
different user segments relate to each other.
You can use this technique to identify new segments
of users who meet complex criteria.
The cohort exploration helps you look
at the behavior and performance of groups
of users related by common attributes,
and the user lifetime technique allows you
to explore user behavior and value
over their lifetime as a customer.
You also have the option to start from a blank template
which will open up an exploration with nothing populated
in the variables or the tab settings pane.
It's a blank canvas to build from.
Let's dive in and create an exploration together.
To start, you can create an exploration
from a blank canvas or from a template.
Let's choose the blank exploration.
When you land in a blank exploration
everything will appear empty.
This is as expected.
Let's start by adding some dimensions and metrics
to the variables pane so we have something to work with.
Click the plus icon next to dimensions
to add some dimensions to the variables pane.
This will open a slide out list
of all of the dimensions available in Explore.
Let's add page path and screen class, device category
in session source medium, and then hit import.
This isn't an exhaustive list of the dimensions
we may wanna use, but these are some pretty
typical dimensions that you may end up using
and you can always add more later if needed.
Next, we'll wanna add some metrics.
Click the plus icon next to metrics to add some
to the variables pane.
Again, this will open up a slide out with all
of the metrics available in Explore.
Let's add views, sessions, and active users,
and then hit import.
Again, this list isn't exhaustive but it's a good
starting point for the dimensions that we've chosen
and you can always add more later if needed.
To build a report, you'll need to double click
or drag and drop dimensions in metrics
from the variables pane to the tab settings pane.
For this example, let's add page path
and screen class as the dimension and views,
sessions and active users as the metrics.
You can quickly add these by double clicking
the tile for each.
This will result in a simple table on the canvas.
Next, let's break down this report
by adding the device category dimension.
If we double click the dimension name,
it will be added to the rows area of the tab settings pane.
It will break down each row by the device used.
This is the same behavior as if you added
a secondary dimension in a standard report
in the reporting UI.
For another view of this data, you can add the device
category dimension to the column section
of the tab settings pane.
To do this drag and drop the tile for device category
to the column section.
This will create a new column for each device category
which shows the breakdown of views, sessions
and active users for each category.
Note that this is a more consolidated view of this data
than if we had added the device category dimension
to the row section, and for dimensions
with only a few values such as device category
it may be a better way to view your data.
Next, let's explore the filter functionality.
To add a filter, scroll to the bottom
of the tab settings pane and click into the dashed box
to drag or select a dimension or metric.
For this example let's create a filter
for the session source medium exactly matches
Google Organic and hit apply.
This will filter all of the data in the report
to only include data that has a session source medium
of Google Organic.
Lastly, let's explore the segment's functionality.
To create a new segment, hit the plus icon next to segments
and the variables pane.
This will open up the segment builder where you can choose
from suggested segments such as recently active users
or purchasers, predictive segments
such as likely seven day purchasers.
Create a segment from a template such as demographics
or technology, or create a custom segment from scratch.
Let's choose the demographics template to quickly
create a segment for country ID exactly matches US.
Give this segment a name of US traffic
and hit save and apply.
This will segment the data in our report to only
show us data that matches a country ID of US.
(upbeat music)