The ability to apply filters is a major feature of Looker Studio. Filters are essential for refining and evaluating data, allowing you to obtain greater visibility into your data, get useful insights, and make educated decisions. Whether you are a seasoned Looker user or just starting, learning the skill of applying filters will enable you to fully utilize Looker Studio and enhance your analytical capabilities. This easy step-by-step guide will show you how to apply filters for events and conversions in Looker Studio!
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Topics Covered:
Event Count vs. User Count
Before we get started, do note that there is a difference between event count and user count.
Event count counts every instance of a certain event happening. For example, we are going to click on the "Browse Courses" button on our website 4 times. Event count will count every instance when someone clicks on the button or takes this event action (i.e. 4 times).
User count only counts the unique user who performed the action and triggered the event, regardless of how many times the event happened. For example, I can click on the "Browse Courses" button on the website 4 times, but the user count will only count the 1 unique user who took this action and not the amount of times the event happened.
When should you use Event Count or User Count to narrow down specific events?
It depends on the action you want to track.
For instance, if you're tracking form submissions, then you would want to see how many unique form submissions by unique users you are generating. So in this scenario, you should use the User Count (i.e. Total Users filtered down to specific events).
If you're tracking actions such as file downloads where users can download multiple files, then you would want to see the number of times this event happened regardless of how many users actually took this action. So in this scenario, you should use the Event Count (i.e. Event filtered down to specific events).
You might also want to see both, so it really depends on the actions you're tracking. Do keep in mind that whether you want to use metric 'Event Count', 'Total Users', or 'Conversions', always filter down using the 'Event Name' to narrow down to specific events or conversions.
Apply Filters for Event Count
1. Click on Insert and add any visualization of choice
2. Select your visualization and select "Event Count" as a metric under the SET-UP column
In this case, the visualization will display all the event counts. However, we don't want to see all the events; we want to narrow down to a specific event. For example, we want to narrow it down specifically to an event that is named 'browse_courses_click'.
3. Scroll down and click on ADD A FILTER
4. Create a Filter that includes the Event Name that contains or equals the Event name as per your Google Analytics
5. Save the filter and apply it to your visualization
In this case, we can see that there are a total of 18 event counts relevant to "browse_courses_clicks".
6. Hover over the metric under the SET-UP column and click on the pen symbol to rename the visualization accordingly (Optional)
Apply Filters for User Count
1. Select your visualization and select "Total Users" as a metric under the SET-UP column
2. Apply the Filter to your visualization
In this case, it shows that there are 16 unique users that took this action/event called "browse_courses_click". So, the event count shows that the event (browse_courses_click) happened 18 times, however, it was done by 16 unique users.
