Google Analytics Conversion Optimization with User Explorer

Until today, I always argued that conversion optimization can’t be done using Google Analytics but it was all before the User Explorer feature. Along with its new features presented at Google’s Firebase, Google is becoming unique in this field.

What is User Explorer Feature?

user explorer

With the User Explorer which is open to some users as Beta version in Google Analytics now you can know who the person is whose all related analytic behavior you observe. It is possible to see which sites the visitors visit, which buttons they hit, which links they click on, which targets they complete that you determined beforehand and also naturally the intersection of all these with other analytic parameters.
As in the screenshot above those unique numbers actually represent Ahmet, Mehmet or oytuneren@gmail.com. Google says in its statement that they won’t tell you who these people are. However, you can find out who they are. The only thing you should do is the following. By making use of Google Analytics APIs and using any field on your website where you get a mail address you should send that info to Google Analytics with an event whenever they drop their mail addresses there. With that event the person’s distinguishing information will be matched with all his/her previous behavior kept in the cookies and in this way along with oytuneren’s emails all his behavior flow will be presented to you.
Now you don’t only have bulk data. Thanks to User Explorer you also have every visitor’s all actions on your site. Moreover, you can not only sort the data by only certain parameters but also get to match it with all Google Analytics data and segment it.

What was Conversion Optimization?

Conversion Rate Optimization has basically 3-phase approach:

Real-time Monitoring > Analyze > Action

In this approach all users’ behavior is monitored individually and in real-time. The collected data will then be analyzed according to your current targets. Moreover, you should come up with test scenarios for unexpected cases and you would make some new segmenting decisions. After that you would put all this into action. You can realize these actions by A/B testing, exit pop ups or personalized emails. Since you can follow a costumer’s full journey, you can set up marketing automations within a lifecycle. Then, you can take other momentary personalized actions just like push notifications.
Real-time monitoring (available only in Premium accounts), one of the most important parts of this approach, is now presented based on visitors individually and with the User Explorer feature Google Analytics claims to be in the game of conversion optimization but they have a lot more to do.

firebase

What if Firebase and User Explorer merge…
Firebase was the main attraction of Google I/O 2016 I participated this year. What interested me the most was that Google provided Firebase with marketing automation properties. Today, tools like that are engineering products where the marketing people are expected to be engineers rather than communication professionals.
Firebase handles a lot of complex scenarios for your website and applications normally done in the background for you. For instance, you can send emails to the users the day after they came to your homepage, viewed product X from there, then viewed product Y and added that product to their cart and exited.

Action with User Explorer

And here comes the most vital question. With User Explorer we know exactly who displays this and that behavior and action. We can even segment them person-based. Now the only thing we need to do is to decide on what to do in the automation scenarios for these people, which we can do now with Firebase. So shall we send push notifications like ‘Heyy, did you fall asleep?’ to those who spend more than 2 minutes on the page?
This is a Google product and even though they have recently disappointed me a little bit, we are talking about an easy-to-use product for any anybody. With a little bit of support for setting it up, you can create cross optimizations in your websites and mobile application. It is enough to set up Google Analytics and I am sure that the marketing folks would slaver for this.
I write baby carriage in Google, click an ad, view the product A, login, add it to cart and exit. 4 days later I directly search for product B on my mobile device. This time our app’s ad pops up. The same user downloads the app, logins and views product B and exits. So shall we send a push notification to this user after 10pm when s/he is closest to buy a product and say ‘We think that product A would fit your baby perfectly’. You can prepare this simple example with all the analytics power with infinitely many different scenarios.
Data is power, just make sure that you want this service.