Ok, you're looking at your Google Analytics, and the number of visits you get. But you know some of them aren't good candidates to buy from you and you want to clear them out of your view. So how do you remove them from the data you are looking at?
Analytics segments, come on down!
For the purpose of this explanation, I'll show you how to segment your visitors so you only see those from New Zealand. Once you get the hang of it you can play around combining filters (e.g show only Australia and New Zealand or show only NZ visitors that came via Google etc.).
1. Login to Google Analytics so you see your visitors, then click on 'Add Segment'
2. The screen that comes up will show a list of default segments. You can select from these if the one you want is there (such as only paid traffic for example)
Click on 'New Segment'
3. Give your segment a name. Make it something meaningful so you can find it in the list later.
4. Click on conditions
5. Click on the drop down arrow next to 'Ad Content' and in the field displayed begin typing 'country' until it comes up underneath
6. Click on Country - this means you are segmenting based on the country that the visitor comes from (based on IP address). You can also specify city or continent.
7. Type in New Zealand in the field - so your segment says 'Filter Sessions (that) include those where the country contains New Zealand. You can also select Exclude if you want to filter by everyone NOT in New Zealand (or any other country you feel like).
8. Click on Save.
9. Note that you can add several conditions together in your filter by clicking ' - Or And', then applying another condition. So you might want to segment your visitors by those from New Zealand AND Australia.
Note also on the right of the screen Analytics calculate the number of users that this filter will effect - from this you can gauge whether your filter is going to leave you with enough visitor sessions to do anything with.
10. And, Voila!
Try adding a new segment but import one from a gallery of segments shared by other Analytics users. These could be useful and some are quite advanced.
