For Digital Marketing, what Metric-Dimension Combination is not Valid?

Any business marketer, like me, who have used Google Analytics know how we can use it to analyze user activity, behavior, and website traffic.

But when we do analyze the content on your website, our focus is to know what brings more engagement and what does not.

1. Like I use four segments in Google Analytics

• This helps me understand whether the audience is right and also provides me with details like their location, demographics, device knowledge, and retention rate. This gives marketers like us a clear picture of the results of your marketing, and how targeted marketing works. 
• The acquisition makes me understand how the user ends up on your website. It tells which channels were most effective, whether was it organic traffic or social media help. It makes me monitor the work on different social media platforms, determine how the search engine optimization is helping, and help me to tweak them according to the desired results. 
• Behavior explains my customer’s activity on the site. Which pages were visited, and what was the average time spent, providing me information about engagement and retention of the viewers? 
• Conversions track if the users are taking the steps that they desire. Example – If the purchases are happening or not. If they are not then what steps in the entire funnel need to be fixed? 

2. How do I use Metrics on Google Analytics?

Measurement of the website activity by the users is done by the use of metrics. It provides me with data that helps me to understand the engagement of people with the website.

It helps to analyze your performance and also helps me get a clear view of which data is attracting most of your audience. 

Google Analytics has these metrics, which provide us marketers with adequate data to monitor the above.

Given the data and statistics, I can now make tweaks or improvements based on surveyed results, and gradually the site will perform better. 

The Icy WHiz team talked to Ronak Kothari, the Marketing Director and Founder of Ronkot Design, about the future of Google Analytics. Here is what he said:

“In my experience as a marketing director and founder of Ronkot Design, I’ve seen Google Analytics continually adapt to new challenges and opportunities in digital marketing. Privacy is becoming a paramount concern, and I anticipate Google Analytics will further strengthen its anonymization techniques and consent management features.

With increasing regulations like GDPR and CCPA, GA will likely offer enhanced tools for data minimization and user consent monitoring, ensuring compliance while providing insightful analytics.

For example, expect more granular data controls that allow businesses to only collect and analyze the most necessary information.

AI integration is another critical evolution I foresee. Currently, we leverage GA4’s predictive metrics to guide our marketing strategies effectively.

In the future, AI will be embedded even deeper into GA, offering real-time, actionable insights powered by machine learning models. Imagine having instant, AI-driven recommendations for optimizing campaigns based on user behavior patterns identified across various touchpoints.

This could significantly reduce the manual efforts of data analysis and improve the accuracy of our marketing strategies.

Finally, the depth of consumer insights provided by Google Analytics will only grow. Advanced segmentation and personalization capabilities will allow for a more nuanced understanding of consumer behavior.

At Ronkot Design, we are already experimenting with combining GA data with AR engagement metrics to track comprehensive user journeys.

In the next five years, I believe GA will offer more sophisticated tools to integrate multi-platform data, enabling marketers to craft highly personalized experiences based on a detailed understanding of user preferences and behaviors across all digital interactions.”

3. The Top Three Metrics of Google Analytics 

• Traffic and Traffic sources – This helps me understand my overall website traffic. How many people are visiting, how are they getting directed there and how good are my marketing campaigns performing? 
•  Bounce Rate – Bounce means moving from one place to another, so bounce rate states how many users bounce to some other website from yours, without even visiting the second page. This usually happens when the total user experience is not good or the website optimization takes time. 
• Conversion Rate – This tells me how many conversions happened on my website. I get to know how many times I got the desired target. However, I have en e-commerce business. For another marketer, this will be variable and depend on what is the type of product or service that your website is offering. 

In an interview with the Icy Whiz team, Inge Von Aulock, CEO of Top Apps, talked about the role of Google Analytics and similar tools evolving in the next five years. Here is what she said:

“In the next five years, tools like Google Analytics will evolve significantly to address privacy concerns, integrate AI, and offer deeper consumer insights. Enhanced privacy features will include more robust data anonymization and compliance with global regulations.

AI will play a pivotal role in predictive analytics, automating insights, and identifying patterns that drive personalized marketing strategies. 

These tools will provide more granular and real-time data, enabling marketers to understand consumer behavior on a deeper level, optimize campaigns efficiently, and make data-driven decisions swiftly.”

4. I will tell you what the Dimensions of Google Analytics are

I have found there to be five key metrics on Google Analytics. One of them is dimensions, and as a marketer, I feel you should focus more on it. Dimensions allow you to get a better view of your data by providing it to you in smaller form, which is more specific about different factors affecting your business.

This helps you to understand the different categories more elaborately and make data-driven changes accordingly.

For instance, I have found that they tell you about the channel traffic, and which channel is getting the most and which the least.

Like I suggest you to take a look at what is the average time duration that a user spends on your site. Or, which pages are creating organic traffic, which are not etc? 

Brian Kratt, the Founder and CEO of Plumb Development, talked to the Icy Whiz team about the role of Google Analytics in terms of addressing privacy concerns, integrating AI, and providing deeper insights into consumer behavior. Here is an excerpt from the interview:

“With my experience in growth marketing, I’ve seen Google Analytics (GA) evolve tremendously, and I expect it to continue addressing the intersection of privacy, AI integration, and consumer insights over the next five years.

Privacy concerns will likely drive GA to adopt more robust anonymization techniques and data protection measures, aligned with global regulations like GDPR and CCPA. These changes will ensure that while we gain valuable insights, consumer data privacy is prioritized and maintained.

AI integration is another critical area where GA can make significant strides. We already see the use of machine learning for predictive analytics and user behavior forecasting.

For example, tools like CustomerOne leverage AI to parse customer behaviors and predict future actions, which GA could expand upon by using AI to provide more actionable, real-time insights.

This could automate many complex analytics processes, providing more intuitive dashboards and decision-making tools for marketers. Lastly, consumer insights will become even deeper as GA evolves.

By incorporating more granular data tracking and advanced segmentation, similar to the capabilities seen in platforms like Experience DNA, GA can deliver detailed insights on customer journeys, preferences, and pain points.

This level of detail allows businesses to tailor their marketing efforts with pinpoint accuracy, driving both engagement and conversion rates.”

5. Now about the Three other Main Dimensions of Google Analytics 

• Users – Users tell the number of visitors on my website, their whereabouts like where they were from, and their activity on the site. 
• Pages – It tells me the activity of the different pages of my website, which had the highest traffic and which the lowest. 
• Devices – I use this to know how users came into my website – like the devices and platforms they used.

6. Marketers should also know about the Metric-Dimension Combination

How Google Analytics works on the input is a combination of dimensions and metrics. This means that it is a collaboration of quantitative and descriptive approaches. The dimension provides the descriptive part and the numerical part is provided by metrics.

The total number of pages viewed in a session is the part provided by the metrics, for which the corresponding dimension would be the URL that is being viewed. 

Now we know that there are different combinations of metric dimensions in Google Analytics, we have to understand that not all of these are valid.

The software itself will not let the user create an invalid combination; however, in some cases that may not be true. 

Smilja Pjesivac, SEO Manager at SWOT Digital, predicted the role of Google Analytics and similar tools evolving in the next five years in an interview with the Icy Whiz team. Here is an excerpt from the interview:

“Google Analytics remains an essential tool for digital marketers, offering valuable insights and comprehensive analysis of marketing activities.

However, with the introduction of GDPR, cookie consent requirements, and the increasing use of ad blockers, data accuracy has become more challenging. Many browsers now block cookies by default, limiting the precision of analytics. 

Despite this, the core function of analytics is to provide marketers with insights into which channels are performing best, facilitating remarketing activities and strategic planning.

Looking ahead, the integration of AI technology will further enhance Google Analytics. 

AI-driven features will offer predictive analytics, deeper behavioral insights, and more personalized user experiences.

As AI continues to evolve, Google Analytics will become even more powerful, maintaining its indispensable role in digital marketing by providing users with increasingly sophisticated tools and insights.”

7. What Metric Dimension Combination is not Valid?

There are two main reasons why a metric-dimension combination may not be valid. The first is when the data types are incompatible with each other.

So, if I combine duration metrics with a country source it will be invalid as these two formats are not compatible. 

Second, when the data has a high volume, Google Analytics tends to perform sampling on the data. This means that a sample of the entire thing is picked up for the analysis. Now, it might be possible that the metric combination which was valid for the entire data set is not valid for the sample. 

Considering the above, the answer to this question is sessions/bounce rate is not a valid metric dimension combination. 

So, we can say there are both valid and invalid combinations. And because all invalid combinations exist due to sampling and incompatibility and do not provide the required analysis.

However, it does not mean that all valid combinations will be meaningful. The key to understanding this is the context of your data, the required analysis and then choosing the most appropriate combinations. 

Guest Author: Saket Kumar

Last Updated on June 4, 2024 by soubhik