Monday, August 18, 2014

Don't Forget about Demographic Data in Universal Analytics

Google has slowly added demographic information to Universal Analytics (formerly Google Analytics).  Because of this phased rollout by Google, many marketers have forgotten to enable this capability.  It is a simple yet highly important setting in Universal Analytics.
Setting up demographic tracking is very straightforward.  In Universal Analytics you navigate to Admin and then Property Settings.  Then enable the slider for "Enable Demographics and Interest Reports." 
 

Universal Analytics Property Setting for Demographics Data


From there you will need to make a change to your Universal Analytics code deployment.  I am a big fan of deploying the Universal Analytics code (and any other tags you have) via Google Tag Manager (GTM).  In GTM to enable demographic data collection for your Universal Analytics account you just need to check a box under the main settings page for Universal Analytics.


Demographics Setting in Google Tag Manager

As in the case of most Universal Analytics changes, you need to exercise a little patience. It typically takes a day or two for the data to start to populate.

Now that you have the data capture working, head over to the audience reports in Universal Analytics.  


Demographics Reports in Universal Analytics


You can drill down by age and gender.  Assuming you enabled the E-Commerce Capabilities (shame on you if you didn't), you should be able to see how your conversion rate compares for men versus women and by age group.  

It is important to realize there is likely a healthy margin of error in these reports.  One of the more common issues is that people share devices which can wreak havoc on these types of reports.  As such, it is good to double check the data against information you capture directly from your users.

Once you dig into the data, it is critical to feed the results back into your paid advertising efforts.  Let's say you discover that certain demographic segments are more inclined to purchase from you than others.  You will then want to adjust your bidding strategy on paid search, Facebook and wherever else you advertise.  If you have segments that perform very poorly you can shut them off entirely in paid advertising.  Alternately you can take a strategy that says you want to bid for all segments, but you are willing to bid much more for your best segments.

This is a very quick win so stop what you are doing and implement demographic reporting now.