Hey there measurement ladies and gentlemen.
Do you know that you can segment your data in GA4?
And by creating segments you can answer
some specific questions with your data and also gain invaluable insights
so let's dive into it.
So what are segments?
Segments are the subsets of your data that you want to analyze.
Let's say you want to look at users who come from a particular country.
Or another example could be users
who purchase specific items in your Ecommerce store.
Well, you can say this is Doable with the help of comparisons.
I can do it in my reports.
And indeed, if you go to reports, this is where you can find this feature
added comparisons and you can add a new comparison.
So let's say country as an example contains.
Here we have United States and let's click OK and let's click Apply and here we go.
In this way you would be able to look at your users from the United States.
Well, it's true, but at the same time it
is important to understand that comparisons are kind of limited.
So you can create only up to four comparisons and the conditions that you
can provide there are also kind of limited.
Also they do not persist.
So you cannot save those comparisons here anyhow.
And they live only within the standard reports.
But let's say I have a specific case.
I want to have a look at users who have
operating system windows, who added my product to cart and later
made a purchase, and they do not come from the United States.
Sounds like a challenge, right?
And this is doable with the help of segments.
So if you want to dive deeper into your
data, you should use the Explore section right here.
And this is exactly where you can create those comparisons.
So let me select a free form as an example for testing purposes.
Here you can see some predefined segments.
And I'm using the Google Demo account and I would definitely recommend using it
if you want to get some inspiration for your segment.
So you can check the reports created by Googlers.
You can see how a specific segment was configured by clicking three dots here.
Or maybe you want to create segments
on your own to play with the data and to see how it works.
Because the ability to create segments defines your GA4 expertise,
so it showcases your mastery if you know how to drill down into your data,
if you know how to work with a subset of data, this makes you a proficient
GA4 user and the Demo account could be your training station.
Okay, so how can you apply a segment?
You can either double click or drag and drop.
I prefer double clicking because it's super comfortable.
So let's say I want to look at direct traffic versus paid traffic.
And here you can see my segments.
All right, but this report is a bit cluttered let me remove those.
And I want to create a very simple one here.
Let's say I want to have my event name
and event count just for the testing purposes, all right?
And now I want to create that specific segment that I mentioned before.
How can you do that?
You should click plus.
And here you can either create a custom segment or choose the suggested segments.
For example, we have General,
which comprises recently active users purchases and so on.
Shopping you can also use Templates if you click Demographics.
This is where you can find some predefined conditions that you could use.
And we also have something called predictive.
And you can see eligibility status ready to use.
In your case, it might be read and it is not eligible.
Why is it so?
Well, Google has been heavily investing
in machine learning and this is exactly the result.
Let me go to the Google documentation.
And here you can see availability
of predictive audiences depends on the underlying predictive metrics being
eligible for use by meeting all prerequisites.
In other words, you have to train the predictive models.
Your GA4 needs some data for you to be able to use this feature.
It is crucial to have traffic.
So I will attach a link to this article under this video.
But here you can read about the prerequisite.
But I think it's just cool to have this feature in GA4.
But let's go back to our custom segments.
And here we have three options user
segment, session segment, and event segment.
And this might be a bit confusing.
So what is the difference between those,
let's say multiple events fired on your website or in your application?
And GA4 collects those events
and the tool can even group those events into sessions, right?
So a user can come to your website today
and then come back later in three days to buy a product.
So a session is a single visit of a user to your website or your application.
In other words, user can initiate multiple
sessions, but those sessions still belong to one user.
And this is the main difference between them.
So, user segment is a subset of your users.
For example, users who have previously purchased a product.
Session segment is a subset of sessions, and an example could be sessions
that originated from a particular advertising campaign.
An event segment is a subset of events
triggered on your website or within your application.
I bet in most cases you would opt for the user segment.
But again, it fully depends on your analysis and on your case.
Let's select this one.
And we should provide a name.
I just provide this name for the testing purposes.
You should provide a proper name,
of course, and you can even add a description.
So this could be particularly useful if
you have a big team, many people working on the same project.
So it's nice to add the description so
that people know what the segment is about.
And this is where you can provide the conditions,
include users when and let's say operate in system because this is what I wanted.
And you can add a filter.
Here you have contains matches regex,
begins with and so on, multiple conditions to choose from.
So this shows you how much flexibility the segment builder can offer.
Let's say contains and here we go, windows.
And then we have this thing here at any point in time, what does it do?
Let's say you have a condition country
equals Croatia and you have a user who was having vacation in Croatia
but then went back home to a different country.
So a user changed the location.
If you mark this condition, that user will be included in the segment.
If you unmark it, this user will be removed from the segment
when he or she stops meeting the condition.
Anyways, I will leave it the way it is and let's click apply.
And now you can see the summary.
So we are kind of filtering our users down, but this is not all that we can do.
You can also add sequences here because I want to also add few steps here,
user who added my product to cart and this is my step number one.
And you can even add the parameters here, but I will not do it right now.
And we can add the second step and we also
have an option indirectly followed by or is directly followed by.
So if you choose the option is directly followed by.
This means that the purchase event took place immediately after the add to cart.
But I don't really care because I just
need the purchase in the end and that's it.
I give my users flexibility.
But this is not all because you can also set kind of time frame.
So here you can see within five minutes.
So you give your users five minutes between add to cart and purchase events.
Well, you can select the time you want, but I do not want to have it now.
Great. But this is not all.
So we can provide the conditions,
we can add sequences, we can also set the time,
but we can also add exclusions and I can add a group to exclude.
And here we have two options temporarily
exclude users when and permanently exclude users when.
So if you select the first one, this means you will exclude users
from the segment during periods when they meet the condition.
If you select permanently exclude users, then you would exclude users
from the segment if they have ever met this condition.
And this is the main difference between those.
And let's say I want to have
my country ID here contains United States and let's click Apply voila.
So here you can see my segment.
So we kind of filtered those users down.
You can see how many users I have in this segment.
And it is ready to be used.
But you can go even a step further here
and you can build an audience based on this segment.
And this shows how much flexibility GA4 can offer because you can create
really powerful audiences using multiple conditions here.
And if you link your analytics account to Google Ads and keep the default option
to enable personalized advertising, then your audiences are available in your
shared library in Google Ads and you can use those in your ad campaigns.
You can also set up remarketing.
I think this is amazing, but this is a topic for our future tutorial.
So let's click Save and Apply and your segment will show up here and it
will be automatically applied to your report here you can see my test segment
and then you could also create the second one for comparison,
let's say with the same conditions but users from the United States.
And in this way you can work with segments.
However, there are some limitations that you should keep in mind.
Specifically, we can create ten segments per exploration.
If you want to use the same segment
but in a different exploration, you would have to create it from scratch.
You can also apply up to four segments
to an individual exploration technique at one time.
I hope you managed to create your segments
and you have fun exploring this nice GA4 feature.
So now you know how to create segments
in GA4 and how to utilize those in explorations.
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See you next time.
Happy measuring.