Google Analytics has many metrics that can help drive insights for your website but it cannot cover every business type – there will be circumstances your website covers that cannot be catered for by the standard metrics or dimensions.
This is where custom variables come in – they are spare slots GA has supplied for you to tailor the GA reports to your business. These five slots (50 if using Google Analytics Premium) are yours to measure anything you wish!
The use of these variables is usually a sign of a more advanced web analytics policy: you’ve got the standard tracking installed on your website, set up a few goals and ecommerce and have started to generate reports that inspire action not data-puking – great job! But now you are starting to ask your web analytics questions whose answers can’t be covered by the standard installation.
