In Plato’s Republic, Socrates tells the story of men chained to a cave wall while a bright fire burns behind them and illuminates the cave walls. As these men see shadows and hear echoes that are the consequence of the reality they cannot fathom outside the cave, Socrates asks if these men would not perceive these shadows and echoes as reality itself since this is all they know. In this cave society, the wisest man in their cave would be the one who could predict what the shadows would do next.

So what happens if a man were released from the cave and shown the real world? His first instinct upon “seeing the light” would be to want to return to the cave, to that which is real to him. But as time wore on, he would adapt to the new reality. He would realize that it was the real world and its reflections on the cave walls that caused the reality he once believed in.

Finally what happens to the man when he is brought back to the cave? How would he remember his first home, what was considered knowledge there, and his fellow prisoners? Would he not feel pity for their ignorance and ashamed of who, and what, he once considered wise? For the wisest man from the cave, is the most ignorant man in the real world. His wisdom is based on guesses and inference instead of analysis and facts. But in “seeing the light” the veil has now been lifted and all of the cave’s values and beliefs are not only going to be questioned, but answered.

This is the analytics crossroads we now find ourselves at with the addition of advanced segmentation and custom reporting in Google Analytics. The goal of any analytics tools should be to allow the user to view data from as many angles, and in as many ways, as possible. Much like gems, there are facets of data that can only been seen if you are allowed to look at the data from a particular angle. With the ability to create custom segments, Google Analytics has exponentially increased the number of ways an analyst can look at the same data that has always been there.

In the cave, analytics professionals were the wise men who were the best at interpreting the shadows. Google Analytics was the fire reflecting the reality of the website, and analytics professionals were forced to make conclusions based on these echoes and shadows of reality. That is not to say there was no truth in the data before advanced segmentation, certainly there was, but without segmentation a good deal of the wise man’s conclusions needed to be based on inference or educated guesses. Advanced segmentation is going to change the analytics society by dragging all of us out of the cave and finally allowing us to see what was behind the shadows we saw before.

As an example, here is a custom segment I made within 10 minutes of having the feature activated in Google Analytics. Since it didn’t exist as a metric before I created it, I am going to call it 3/3 visitor {If only analytics were astronomy, I could get naming rights and henceforth these people would be known as Devlin Visitors…}. This would be someone who has visited the site at least 3 times and has made at least 3 purchases. To me that would be an indication that this type of visitor is site loyal and potentially very valuable. Mining this data out of GA before would have been nearly impossible. The results that came back were startling. So mind numbingly shocking that I took a screen shot and I am going to post it here.

So in about 10 minutes advanced segmentation has identified a segment of visitor who:

Now think about thousands of analytics professionals spending thousands of hours with advanced segmentation and you can easily predict the amount of discovery and knowledge this advanced segmentation will lead to. Identifying, capturing, and catering to unique visitor segments is the next evolution in analytics and website usability. Advanced segmentation will allow for marketing budgets to be more focused and have higher ROI, and help direct multivariate testing on site to optimize the revenue return on segments that have been identified as highly profitable. The most valuable segments will find shopping easier as the website adapts its acquisition and retention models to cater to these high value visitor’s shopping and buying habits.

My guess is that advanced segmentation will lead to monumental discoveries about metrics, KPIs and how different types of visitors behave on a website. Much of what we once knew and took as fact are going to end up being shadows that tricked our eyes and echoes that seduced our ears. Some men who were considered wise are going to be exposed, while some who were considered insignificant are going to make great discoveries. But if knowledge, and not fame or fortune, was the ultimate goal, then these will be the best days of our lives.

It’s time to step out of the cave and into the light. Plato would be proud.