Under the Audience tab, we recently found another new feature in Google Analytics called “Active Users” in (beta) version. Active users include all users, both new users and returning users that have visited your webpage or mobile app at least once during a selected time period. Through Active users report you can determine the number of unique users (including both new and returning) who visited your website in the last 1, 7, 14 or 30 days in the selected time period. This could be a quick way to see how many return visitors your website is getting on daily, weekly, bi-weekly or monthly basis.
How Active Users dimension looks like ?
We have several selection options to show graph for different time period selection like 1 day, 7 days, 14-days or 30-days active users.
Metrics
Active Users report lets you see below metrics:
- 1-Day Active Users
- 7-Day Active Users
- 14-Daya Active Users
- 30-Day Active Users
How these metrics are useful to relate to your selected date range?
These metrics in the report are defined to the last day in the selected date range that you are using for the report. If your date range is July 1 to July 31:
- 1-Day Active Users : the number of unique users who had at least one session within the last day in your active date range
- 7-Day Active Users : the number of unique users who had at least one session within 7-day period includes the last day in your active date range
- 14-Daya Active Users: the number of unique users who had at least one session within a 14-day period. The 14-day period includes the last day in your active date range.
- 30-Day Active Users: the number of unique users who had at least one session within 30-day period. The 30-day period includes the last day in you active date range.
“More accurate word for active users is users”, hence users and active users as metric are same thing for Active users report. Also active users don’t mean real time users which are altogether separate dimension report.
Different ways to draw insights from this report
Data segmentation by location
Segmenting Active users by different locations will help you get information about top city, regions etc to do further campaign as per their website behavior as shown in below screenshot
Data segmentation by traffic sources
Segmenting Active Users by different traffic sources can show you which source/channel is contributing maximum Traffic in selected date range or time period as shown in below screenshot:
In this scenario, direct source is contributing maximum users followed by Facebook.
This report could be useful if you want to monitor traffic (in terms of unique users) during promotional campaign (FB Campaign).
Data segmentation by different Devices
Segmenting Active Users by different devices such as mobile, tablet etc can show you users behavior and funnels on each level like category, product page and conversion page as shown in below screenshot.
Data segmentation by Conversions
Segmenting Active Users by conversion metric can help you determine number of conversion made within selected date range as shown in below screenshot:
We are getting maximum conversion in 30 Day Active Users period which means users maximum conversion made by returning users.
Why Google keeps on upgrading Google Analytics with such features?
There could be some specific reasons for these new features in Google Analytics like cohort analysis, Tree Maps , active users etc
- Active users feature is useful in cross domain reporting like we have three profiles in Google Analytics account to see which profile or website drive maximum and unique traffic.
- Also, you can get better insight and carry out more data manipulation with a dedicated reporting section, rather than just reporting numbers in the overview report.
What it is all about?
Like any business, you would need to keep track of the level of visitors/users interest.
If the numbers are consistently in line with your requirements, you are done with your job.
If the numbers are below expectations, you will need to check your marketing efforts that whether you are targeting the right audience or not. You can look for any negative social content or traffic from referral site (blogs) that might affect traffic. Even if all the marketing and social content are positive, you might be seeing technical hurdles for your users with your website.
Note: If you see a rapid, unexpected decline in numbers, that could indicate technical issues like problems with a new release. Or it could indicate that new content doesn’t measure up to the standard your users have come to expect.
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