Accelerate your thought leadership by contributing to our blog. Join our community of experts now!
How many times have you started watching a TV show on your smartphone, only to realize it’d work much better on a bigger screen, so you switch to your laptop or TV? Probably many.
So, it’s still you, watching the same content on a different device.
Something similar happens to Google Analytics tracking visits on your website. It can track the number of unique users on your web pages, but the total number you get isn’t completely accurate since some users are just accessing the website from different devices. In today’s tech world, the overall traffic comes from smartphones as much as from desktop computers, so it’s likely that a single person will eventually log in from more than one device.
How do you count your visitors correctly, then?
As you may already know, Google Analytics can’t use a person’s personal info or IP address to give you insights into your audience structure and behavior. However, it can do the next best thing – allow you to use a unique user ID to get you valuable information about new and returning users on your website.
In this detailed guide, you’ll learn about the benefits of using Google Analytics User ID, how to set them up, and how to use them to learn more about your users’ purchase journey.
Let’s get started.
Google Analytics User ID is a feature that enables you to assign a unique combination of letters and numbers to each website user. Thanks to the User ID, you can associate multiple sessions across devices with a unique identifier and learn more about how specific people behave on your website and get more accurate data.
That means you will be able to confirm that, for example, the same user has visited your website multiple times using different devices or browsers. For example, you can send User IDs every time a user logs into your app or website, and later associate those sessions in Google Analytics so they’re displayed as a single user.
Here’s an example of what a User ID looks like: e8a036gf
What you should know about User IDs in Google Analytics is that the tool doesn’t assign them automatically – you need to generate and assign the IDs on your own. When assigning these identifiers, make sure they don’t contain any personally identifiable information (PII). Breaking this rule may end up with Google suspending your Google Analytics account.
Related: Google Analytics Reporting: A Complete Guide to Reports, Metrics, Dimensions, and More
It’s important to remember that User ID and Client ID can’t be used interchangeably. There are differences in how they’re generated and what information they can give you.
Here are the most notable differences:
Related: Sessions vs. Users vs. Pageviews in Google Analytics: Everything You Need to Know
There are many valuable benefits of using Google Analytics User ID reports. Here’s an overview of the reasons why you should take advantage of this Google Analytics feature.
A User ID provides you with more accurate data when it comes to the number of unique visitors that use your website.
Setting up a User ID allows you to fix attribution issues as you are able to identify a single user and attribute corresponding interaction with your website to them.
This is important because users who log in and those who don’t usually engage with your website in different manners. If you manage to identify and segment users who log in to interact with your website, you can adjust your marketing and sales strategy to match their needs.
All of this enables you to understand your users’ buyer’s journey better for different types of customers as it allows you to track their behavior across multiple devices and sessions.
Using session unification (a feature that we’ll explain shortly), you can draw important conclusions about how people engage on your website on different devices and discover how you can improve their user experience on each device type.
The last, but not least important reason why setting up a User ID is an excellent idea is the fact that it enables you to create a special type of report in Google Analytics.
Google Analytics User ID reports filter the sessions containing User ID and the map of their interactions with your pages. That will give you a better understanding of your website’s performance.
Sure, there are dozens (and dozens?) more Google Analytics 4 metrics you could track. But, starting with these 10 commonly tracked metrics will give you a pretty high-level view of how your marketing is working…
If you want to track these in Google Analytics, you might find the visualizations limiting. It’s also a bit time-consuming to combine all the metrics you need in one view.
To better understand how your website performs in terms of traffic growth and conversions, we’ve made this plug-and-play dashboard that contains all the essential metrics for understanding how successful you are at optimizing different aspects of your website.
You can easily set it up in just a few clicks – no coding required.
To set up the dashboard, follow these 3 simple steps:
Step 1: Get the template
Step 2: Connect your Google Analytics account with Databox.
Step 3: Watch your dashboard populate in seconds.
Unfortunately, not all websites are eligible for using this Google Analytics feature. Any app or website that contains some type of login can set up a User ID, for example, social media platforms or e-commerce sites.
If you don’t already have some kind of user identification in your system, an ID that would follow the user and remain the same through sessions and across devices, you’re not eligible for using Google Analytics User ID reports.
If you decide to set up identification options on your website in the future, you’ll be able to set up User IDs at that point.
Note that there are several physical ways to implement User ID – by using loyalty cards, wrist bands, or biometric identification. However, these ways may require more time and effort.
So, does your website have a system login? If so, you’re ready to set up User ID tracking and start collecting unique IDs to identify unique users of your website every time they use their credentials to sign into their account.
First, you should enable a User ID view in your GA account. You need to create one since it’s not visible in the regular Google Analytics view.
Here are the steps to follow to create a new User ID in Google Analytics:
3. You’ll be asked to review the User-ID Policy and select ON to move on to the next step.
4. Here, use the code below Universal Analytics Tracking Code to set up ID tracking. In this step, it’s also important to enable the Session unification feature. Why? Because in this case, all engagement that happens during a session before a login will be assigned to that same user and you’ll have more accurate data. Click Next to move on.
5. This is the final step, where you’ll click on Done and complete the activation of the User ID feature.
Now that you’ve enabled the User ID view in your Google Analytics account, it’s time to set up the tracking code on your website and send the IDs to GA.
You can do it by adding it to the tracking code on your welcome page – the one that’s displayed to the user after they log in.
Another option is to use the Google Tag Manager and create a Macro set to the User ID and modify your Google Analytics tag.
You can also add userId attribute to the Property definition function, but make sure you set a value for the User ID first. The best practice is to use the same value you use for the identification system, while ensuring that it’s unique, but not personally identifiable.
If you’re not proficient in coding or you have a team of developers that maintains your website, you may want to reach out to them to save your time and start tracking User ID as soon as possible.
Related: The 3 Essentials for Properly Setting Up Google Analytics Conversion Tracking
After you’ve set up the tracking code, you should focus on making the most out of it. It’s time to learn what information you can get from it and how.
When you navigate to the User ID view that you’ve set up in Google Analytics, you can see if there’s already data sent from your website. That proves that you’ve set up the code correctly and that tracking is working.
To get insights from your website data, open your Audience tab in GA and go to User explorer. This tab will show you a table with User IDs and information about the users’ behavior on your website: number of sessions, average session duration, bounce rate, revenue, and more.
One way to use the collected IDs is to segment your website visitors – the ones who used the website without getting a User ID (which means they didn’t sign up or log in), and the ones with a User ID assigned to them. Which group engages more or converts more often? These insights can help you boost your website performance and turn more visitors into registered users.
As we’ve previously mentioned, it’s hard to make use of this GA feature unless you have users register or log into your system to engage with your website further. And even when you do, this user tracking system may not always work perfectly. Here are some of its limitations.
Despite having a system login, the User ID feature only enables you to track users who actually sign in. You may enable the Session unification option, but it may not be able to help you in some cases. If a user, for example, interacts with your website without logging in, you won’t collect any information about their behavior on the website.
User IDs may be helpful when it comes to identifying the stages of your customers’ journey, but note that you still can’t learn information about their demographics, interests, or even get real-time data.
The users themselves may stop you from getting any data at all by using ad blockers, since these extensions may interfere with your User ID tracking.
Another limitation worth mentioning is that the User ID view isn’t compatible with all products you might be using, such as Google Ad Manager or Campaign Manager 360.
To fully leverage the information you can get using the User ID feature in Google Analytics, you should become familiar with some basic terms you may stumble upon. Let’s go through a few most common ones.
User ID hits refer to specific types of engagement on your website, such as pageviews, transactions, or events, that you’ve set a User ID for. If the User ID hasn’t been set for specific actions, you’ll see them as Non-User ID hits.
Similarly, User ID sessions are those in which a user got assigned a User ID. These sessions are made of User ID hits that you collect during the session, but also the ones made pre-session if you have the Session unification feature enabled.
Non-User ID sessions are regular Google Analytics sessions where no User IDs have been assigned.
Related: New vs. Returning Visitors: What’s the Right Balance & Does It Even Matter?
User ID Property is the one where you’ve enabled the User ID feature.
By choosing User ID View, you display the data collected from the sessions that had a User ID assigned to them. You can check if this view is enabled by opening View Settings in the Admin tab. You’ll see that User ID reports are enabled below your website’s URL.
Any views collecting data from regular Google Analytics sessions, without a User ID being assigned to users, will be displayed in a Non-User ID view. In this case, GA will track Client IDs that are automatically assigned to your website users and count them as unique visitors.
So, what kind of reports can you get after you set up the User ID tracking? Here are two valuable ones.
User ID Coverage Reports allow you to identify how many sessions come from registered/logged users on your website, compared to the number of sessions that didn’t get a User ID. Here’s how to access this report:
Another way to leverage the User ID view is to use cross-device reports to unlock more information about your website audience.
Primarily, you can learn a lot about the conversion path of your users as you gain access to data about how they engage across devices, how many sessions they had on each type, how many users interacted with your website using different devices, etc.
To access this report, click on Audience on the left side of your GA home page and select Cross-Device from the drop-down menu.
Related: The 22 Most Useful Google Analytics Reports
Finding a reliable tool that will provide you with accurate data and save your time can be a challenging quest.
You’re tired of logging into dozens of tools to learn how your website, sales pipeline, or marketing strategy are performing. You simply can’t create any more reports from scratch and struggle to find the best way to display your data so it looks digestible and visually appealing.
What if we told you we had an all-in-one solution for you? Equipped with a ton of integrations, simple to use, and providing a bunch of templates where you can easily mix and match metrics to fit your needs?
It’s not a fantasy – it’s Databox.
Databox allows you to track all relevant metrics in a single, streamlined dashboard that you can integrate with over 70 tools.
Moreover, you can customize your dashboards so they’re ready for each report you need to create – say goodbye to spending endless hours building reports block by block. Now, you can finally save time while building brilliant presentations with no coding or design knowledge whatsoever.
Are you curious to learn more about this game-changing feature from Databox? Create your free account today and join 20,000+ businesses that have already taken reporting to the next level.
Get practical strategies that drive consistent growth