Hey there!
I'm Benjamin from Loves Data.
In this video you'll learn about the benefits of implementing Google Analytics User ID.
If you can identify individuals as they experience your website, for example if people can log
in, then you can implement the User ID feature.
I'll walk through how user ID can give you a more accurate understanding of your audience,
outline limitation of User ID and show you how to track individuals coming from your
email campaigns.
Let's get started...
You can send a User ID when a page view (or other data) is sent to Google Analytics.
This allows you to tie sessions together when the User ID is the same, even if the sessions
are on different devices.
For example, if you ask people to log in on your website and on your app you can connect
this data together inside your reports.
If someone logs in on their mobile device, then on their desktop and then on their tablet
you can tie these three separate sessions together and you'll have a single user reported
inside Google Analytics.
Now let's look at the same scenario, but this time if we didn't send the User ID with each
session.
Instead of reporting on one user, we'd be reporting on three users, three devices and
three sessions.
You can immediately see the benefit of implementing User ID.
You will have a better understanding of how people engage with your business, even across
multiple devices.
So User ID is amazing, but it isn't perfect either.
Why?
Well, odds are only a small portion of your audience will actually log in across multiple
devices.
If they haven't logged in and the User ID hasn't been sent, then Google Analytics can't
tie the data together.
This is okay since you'll still be able to access insights for those people who do actually
log in, but what if you don't have any type of login?
Then what?
If you have another way of identifying people as they access your website, app or other
touch points, then you can still make use of User ID.
The thing to remember is that you need to be able to identify someone.
Here's one idea to get you thinking...
Let's say you collect email addresses on your website.
Those email addresses then get stored in your email platform and that platform assigns a
unique ID to each person that subscribes.
You can then add that ID to the URLs contained in the emails you send.
As people click through to your website from your emails the ID can be passed to Google
Analytics and used to tie sessions together.
This would mean that if someone clicked through to your website on their desktop and then
later on their mobile device the ID in the links would be the same and you could see
the different devices people are using.
So without anybody having to log in you can identify them and make use of User ID in your
reports.
And you can easily implement this with Google Tag Manager...
Once you've configured your email platform to add the ID as a query parameter to your
inbound links, you can create a variable to capture the value of the query parameter.
Here's an example that captures the value of my 'subscriber ID' query parameter...
You can see I've selected 'URL' as the variable type and then 'query' as the component type.
Then all I need to do is adjust my Google Analytics tag to use the variable...
Here I'm setting the 'user ID' field and passing the value of the variable...
Then all I need to do is head into Google Analytics and enable the 'User ID' feature...
This will also require you to create a special reporting view for User ID.
That's it!
Now this isn't about Google Analytics, but I did want to mention a report in Google AdWords
that you might want to check out...
It's the Google AdWords cross-device activity reports.
They're really interesting because they 'automagically' show you cross-device conversions based on
people logged into Google accounts.
Google's system starts by observing conversion data from your conversion tags and then when
there is enough data and confidence in it, it expands this to estimate conversion across
users that haven't been signed into a Google account.
I know what you're thinking.
Yes, it's limited to our Google AdWords campaigns, but it is providing deeper insights into our
audience and the device paths they're using to engage with us online.
So if you haven't taken a look at the Cross-Device Activity reports, they're absolutely worth
it.
You'll find the reports under 'Search Attribution' in the new version of Google AdWords.
// So they are the benefits of implementing the User ID feature in Google Analytics.
If you have a way of identifying people as they visit or log into your website, app or
other touch points, then you can gain a deeper understanding about the devices and paths
people are using to engage with you online.
And don't forget to check out the cross-device reports in Google AdWords, they show Google
is innovating how we report on users and conversions for our AdWords campaigns.
Have you used the user ID feature in Google Analytics?
I'd love to know - let me know in the comments below!
And if you found this video helpful, then please like it, so I know to make more videos
like this.
See you next time!