Session Quality Score: a new Google Analytics report

Few days ago I noticed in some of my clients’ account that in Google Analytics a new report appeared. It has been named Quality Session and announced six months ago. You can find it under the path Audience> Behavior> Session Quality.

What is Session Quality Report?

Basically, Google uses a machine learning system that assigns a quality score to each session within a range from 1 to 100 and it is used to determine how close a user is to convert (or the likelihood of conversion). A high quality score value indicates that the user is characterized by a high engagement with the site, and therefore he has a high probability to convert. Viceversa, a low quality score indicates a low level of user involvement. The new report provides both the Session Quality (range of values) and the Average Session Quality. The latter is a value that is calculated for all dimensions related to a particular date range. Session Quality and Average Session Quality can be used in standard reports, in segments, audience and custom reports (Average Session Quality). Below you can find a “live” example of the new report.

A) Session Quality Range: the range of willingness to buy

B) Automatic segments creation: just similarly to the Enhanced Ecommerce, in this part of the screen you can directly create segments for a Session Quality’s single range

C) Column with ASQ: In this example, the metric ASQ is set in relation to the size Default Channel Grouping.

Unfortunately, the report is not available for all e-commerce sites, since you must meet the following prerequisites:

• Minimum 1,000 (one thousand) transactions / month tracked by one of Google Analytics ecommerce modules
• Once 1,000 transactions are completed, Google Analytics need 30 days of ongoig data (transactions) to generate the report.

How can I use the Session Quality Report?

1. Segmentation

As previously reported, the Session Quality Report and the ASQ are available for various reports and segments.

By creating segments via the Session Quality we can better understand, for example:

• Which channel or campaign is generating the highest number of sessions closed to conversion?
• What are the contents that attract mostly the users?
• What are the paid keywords which bring less qualified traffic to the site?
• What are the best navigation paths within the site?
• What sections or interactions to put on testing?
• Etc.

In addition, creating a segment with condition “Session Quality = 1” you could eliminate spam bots that have visited the site, because in 99.9% of cases they have time on site equals to 0, 100% bounce, etc..

     2. Remarketing

Thanks to SQ or ASQ it is possible to create remarketing lists in Google Analytics ever more accurate, improving investments, aiming at users with high ASQ.

     3. Customization and Testing

The Average Quality Session data can be used within custom reports, so you can breed more data of interest and gather more information about users. As an example I could cross the figure of ASQ with the User ID or any other custom dimensions, achieving very precise clusters of potential new customers!

Key Takeaways

Regarding testing, however, in Google Optimize you could generate the experiments relying on data from the Session Quality. Recap In the basic report, the quality score can determine what percentage of users that have the greater or lesser propensity to convert. If we think about it, this information allows us to go beyond the classic segment “converted” vs “has not converted ‘, matching each dimension with the users’ engagement and their propensity to convert. In addition, the generation of this report seems to wink to the “predictive” section that currently lacks in Google Analytics (excluding prediction API).