How to segment users based on secondary dimension in Google Analytics?

Question

We are running AB test and want to check important parameters like exit percentage, bounce rate etc. for both set of users.

We run AB test based on our cookie "BWTest". I want to check the above parameters for both set of users. What I have done so far is:- Added above cookie as custom dimension and I can view all the data drilled down by BWTest values now.

But if I have run an experiment on BWTest = 1 to 10 and my control is 11 to 100 and I want to have 2 such views to compare both so that I can compare exit percentage etc. in experiment vs control. How can I bifurcate this data based on BWTest value?

Answer 1

Instead of adding a secondary dimension, you can segment on the values of your custom dimension. That will allow you to compare sessions by collections of values instead of individual values, and to get totals/overall averages for metrics for each collection. (The second point would be a reason to use segments even if you were only comparing individual BWTest values to each other.)

GA always treats dimensions as strings/text, not numbers, even if the value is a number, so you'll need to use either a regular expression or the "is one of" match type for your values. "Is one of" takes multiple exact values for the dimension, one per line. There is also "is not one of", which would be better for your Control segment if you go that route.

If your BWTest values are actual and not just an example, the regular expressions aren't too complicated:

^(\d|10)$ will match any single digit plus 10 (to exclude 0 use ^([1-9]|10)$ instead), for a BWTest Experiment segment.

^(1[1-9]|[2-9]\d|100)$ will match 11-100, for a BWTest Control segment.

You can apply your BWTest Experiment and BWTest Control segments simultaneously to reports to get direct comparison of the statistics you're interested in.