Once you have implemented Google Analytics on your website, you start getting the reports in your tool. But at this time you realize that may be you want some more data, for example, what kind of error messages people come across on your site? Which users come on your site? How many newsletter sign up have occurred in last 7 days on your site? For such instances we can use customization within the GA code to create custom dimensions, and capture such additional parameters during the journey of our online visitors.
Think about custom dimensions as categories, like Shape, Color, Username, PageName, ErrorMessage, Error Code, and custom metrics as counters, like number of error messages, number of logins, page views, article views, logins etc. To think about the usage of these custom dimensions and custom metrics, imagine if you want to know what kind of error codes appear most often on your site, or what users have logged in maximum number of times in last one week. In such a scenario, capture error code or user name in custom dimensions and the count of error message and count of logins in custom metrics. While creating the custom report you can get the error message/usernames in the rows, whereas custom metrics can be pulled to display the counts of each of the values at rows.
Think about the following visit:
1) User enters wrong username to login, and gets the error message "Username Incorrect"
2) User enters wrong password to login, and gets the error message "Password Incorrect"
3) User Enters wrong Username again, and gets the error message "Username Incorrect"
If we capture error messages in custom dimensions and error count in custom metrics, you can view the following custom report:
1) Username Incorrect ----------- 2
2) Password Incorrect ----------- 1
This kind of a report can help your developers to optimize the site, and enhance the user experience.
