Demographic data is a lot more valuable than you may think. It can help shape your website, paid advertising channels and even your overall business model - and it's readily available.
By identifying the overall behaviour of different demographic groups, based on age, gender and interests, you can tailor your website and paid online advertising towards them.
Google Analytics Demographic data
How much demographic information is available on Google Analytics?
Google Analytics has a wealth of free information about the different demographics who visit your website. This data is collected mainly from people who are logged in to a Google account plus from additional third-party cookies and app data. Each Google account has a lot of pre-set personal information, such as age and gender. Google can identify any users who are logged in while they are browsing a website which has Google Analytics running in the background. They can then collectively associate the users’ personal information with their website sessions. Users can be signed into a Google account when using any of the following:
Google Chrome Browser
YouTube
Gmail
Chromebook Laptop Devices
Android Mobile Devices
And many more…
Android and iPhone Apps can also pass on user information to Google Analytics through their advertising channels. This is a surprise to many people and has led to experts saying that free apps aren’t really free as you pay for them with your personal information.
Google Analytics Demographic data
The above chart shows the average percentage of demographic data available for our clients’ highest traffic volume US websites. The amount of data available is slightly less for business-to-business websites and slightly more for business-to-consumer websites. On average, 67% of user demographics is known. What type of demographic information is available in Google Analytics?
Google Analytics Demographic data
Age
The ages reported on are segmented into seven age ranges: 18-24, 25-34, 35-44, 45-54, 55-64 & 65+
Note that under 18’s are not part of the age demographic report for several reasons.
Google Analytics Demographic data
Gender
Both genders are reported on, as you’d expect. Google currently has slightly more data on gender than age but there is still a small percentage of users down as “Unknown” gender.
Google Analytics Demographic data
Interests
Interests are the most “interesting” (sorry) pieces of data you can find within the “Audience” section of Google Analytics. Google uses an array of data taken from Gmail, app messages, internet browsing habits and YouTube videos watched to scientifically guess each user’s personal interests.
There are three different types of interests you can view:
Affinity Categories – People who are labelled as part of a collective. For example, people who like travel or sports, or using their smartphone a lot.
In-Market Segments – People who are actively in-market to buy something at the moment. For example, people looking for a holiday, smartphone or piece of sports equipment.
Other Categories – This is a more in-depth Digital Marketing Companies in Detroit look at affinity categories. For example, people who fly a lot, people who play a lot of games on a smartphone, or people who like to watch football. How to view age, gender or interests metrics in Google Analytics The easiest way to view demographic data is by selecting your website’s view within Google analytics then visiting [Audience > Demographics] or [Audience > Interests]. Demographics report From the demographics menu, you can see age and gender metrics as either their overview traffic splits, or alongside useful metrics such as site usage data:
Google Analytics Demographic data
Google Analytics Demographic data
Interests report
From the interests report, you can see an overview of the most populated interests, or dig deeper into the metrics of each interest:
Google Analytics Demographic data
Segmenting by age, gender or interests
Looking at the average metrics of all users combined only gives you a vague picture of how the website performs. For example, one area of the website may perform better for females and another may perform better for males. Looking at just the overall statistics won’t show this difference, as they may cancel each other out. These generic statistics can lead to incorrect, or even hazardous Digital Marketing Companies in San Jose conclusions about demographic performance. By using the segmenting tool within Google Analytics, you can draw out any segment of users and then look at all reports for that segment alone. Start by adding a “New Segment” found near the top of a useful report, such as the “Landing Pages” report within the “Behaviour” section:
Google Analytics Demographic data From here you can make a new “Custom” segment using one or more demographics to filter out particular people. For example, you may only wish to see metrics for older males, so you could choose [Gender = Male] and [Age = 45-54, 55-64 or 65+]:
Google Analytics Demographic data
Google Analytics gives you an indication of the percentage of traffic you have now segmented on the right-hand side. It’s good to ensure that you have at least 1,000 users in a segment before making any conclusions. If you don’t have enough users, you may get unreliable or even reversed noisy data. You can now look at any report on Google Analytics and only see metrics based on the custom segment. In my example, we will only now see metrics for older males until the segment is removed and the default “All Users” segment is re-initiated (this happens automatically if you delete all segments). By adding a second segment, you can compare metrics between the two segments. For example, I may want to compare older males with younger males to see if there are any differences between them:
Read Also:- Improve your business brand with Google ads
Google Analytics Demographic data The data above shows a 13% difference in the conversion rate of younger males compared to older males. This is a significant difference which is generating less revenue from younger males, even though they produce higher traffic numbers. Secondary dimensions and advanced filtering
If segments are confusing, or time-consuming to set up, you can quickly add a secondary dimension to any report to compare one dimension with another: