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Here at FIRST, we’ve been playing with Google Analytics calculated metrics for a while now and we are very excited to see them launched in public Beta (for Universal Analytics properties only). The only bad thing about calculated metrics is that they are limited to 5 per view only for non-premium customers (50 for GA Premium)!
Calculated metrics are defined based on existing metrics. They will help you to further customise GA towards your business’ objectives.
There are 5 types of formatting you can use:
Below is an example for each format:
Float
Pageviews per User
This metric will tell you a little more on user engagement – to be used with user segments.
Formula:
{{Page Views}} / {{Users}}
Integer
Forecast Final Conversions
This is useful when you have a multiple step process towards your final goal and you approximately know the conversion rate between your final conversion point and the step before.
For instance, if you know that 75% of users who have been fully approved to your service will actually convert, then your formula will look like this:
Formula:
{{Goal-step-1 XX Completions}} * 0.75
Currency
Cost Per Acquisition
Here is a metric that we often need to report on and still I don’t understand why it’s not a standard metric alongside goal conversion rate…
Formula:
{{Cost}} / {{Goal XX Completions}}
Time
Average Session Duration Per User
This is different than the standard avg. session duration metric, which is the session duration per session.
The avg. session duration per user would be especially useful to show user engagement according to their status (new vs. returning users, members vs. non-members, etc.)
Formula:
{{Session Duration}} / {{Users}}
Percent
Success Rate
Success rate measures the number of a “success” goal completions against the number of “attempts”, i.e. the sum of successes (such as approvals) and failures (such as declines).
Formula:
{{Success Goal XX Completions}} / ({{Success Goal XX Completions}} + {{Failure Goal XX Completions}})
You can also find other great examples (especially the user-defined ones) in this excellent article from Lunametrics.
Learn more about Calculated Metrics on Google Analytics Help
Your turn now! Can you think of any calculated metrics that would make sense to your business?
Happy analysis! 🙂