Comments on: Are Your Existing customers Messing Up Your Analytics?

By: John Chan

John Chan — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 01:51:48 +0000

Google analytics are great with recency of visits, loyalty,etc. However, they do still put noise. I actually have different analytics for sign in and non sign in users.

By: garden tillers

garden tillers — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 01:17:39 +0000

i personally use google analytics to determine which are returning visitors and which are new. then i look at their behavior and which pages they viewed.

By: ThongJsn

ThongJsn — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 08:28:34 +0000

I use only Google Analytic too.

By: Genetic

Genetic — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 08:26:39 +0000

I use only Google Analytic.

By: Property Management Software

Property Management Software — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 16:27:42 +0000

We send existing customers to a different site with different analytics. Problem solved. =)

By: Lenen

Lenen — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 07:38:21 +0000

We use different segments for Direct traffic, CPC, Referrals, brand name and organic search traffic. This way you can measure and track different activities.

By: Annuity Insurance Leads

Annuity Insurance Leads — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 16:39:45 +0000

It varies by the site (we have four). On one which has high paid subscription percentage we only track New Visitors in GA.

Another is an ecommerce site with corporate clients doing a significant share of the buying. For this one we created separate “stores” personalized to their “look”wherein all their employee purchase take place. This allows us to easily distinguish the “tied” houses statistics within GA.

By: City Smart

City Smart — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 18:30:09 +0000

We setup a custom filter to only include New Visitors using Google Analytics:

Custom Filter -> Include -> Visitor Type -> New – Case Sensitive “No”

This doesn’t answer the question about returning visitors who are not already customers.

By: Tim Leighton-Boyce

Tim Leighton-Boyce — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 07:55:42 +0000

One technique I use on all my sites is to have a GA profile which only shows generic search traffic. Although this is obviously only a sample, I find it useful as a proxy for the behaviour of people who do not already know the brand and the site.
It’s not accurate, of course, but it often provides clues.

By: Rich Page

Rich Page — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 21:54:28 +0000

The way I helped remove some of this skewing of direct types just for logging in, was to actually move the login page, and encourage them to bookmark and return to that page, instead of the homepage.

You can also set up a segment to get rid of users who only visit the homepage and login.

Rich Page

By: BradleyT

BradleyT — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 21:17:31 +0000

I use the advanced segments to filter those who visited the members page (the “homepage” after succesfull log in).

New vs. returning visitors is an OK filter but non customers can easily be returning visitors.

By: @grumpygrandma

@grumpygrandma — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 14:44:46 +0000

I use Google Analytic’s advanced segments to differentiate between new and returning visitors – it’s one of the default segments. Then I can apply any of the reports available in GA to just that segment.

By: Rachel Burkot

Rachel Burkot — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 14:30:16 +0000

Why is it only with subscription-based services that it becomes difficult to separate new and returning visitors? Can’t you use the analytics tool that tells you how many visitors were new and how many were returning?