A Google Analytics Advanced Segment for Smartphones

“Mobile” is a tricky topic, if for no other reason than the fact that tablets are mobile devices and smartphones are mobile devices. And, when it comes to web sites, even ones that have brilliantly adaptive/responsive designs, the user experience (and, often, the user’s intent) can vary quite a bit depending on whether they’re visiting the site from their phone or from a tablet. That’s the first question I tackled in my most recent Practical eCommerce article, Analyzing Mobile Traffic in Google Analytics; 5 Questions.

Google Analytics has been a little slow on the uptake when it comes to their default segments on this front. First, they only had “Mobile Traffic,” which included both smartphones and tablets. More recently, they added a “Tablet Traffic” segment, so now, with a default segment, you can split out tablet traffic, too (but “Mobile Traffic” is inclusive of both smartphones and tablets):

Luckily, it’s easy enough to create a custom segment that is Smartphone Traffic only. The segment looks like this:

Create it yourself, or, if you want it pre-created, you can get it at http://bit.ly/ga_phone.

Happy segmenting!