Dashboards

Dashboards are a collection of widgets that give you an overview of the reports and metrics you care about most. Dashboards let you monitor many metrics at once, so you can quickly check the health of your accounts or see correlations between different reports. You can have up to 20 dashboards with 12 widgets in each for each view / property in your Google Analytics account. Each view / property includes a default dashboard to get you started. Dashboards are easy to create, customize and share.

Go to your Dashboards

To access your Dashboards, navigate to your view, then:

1.      Select the Reporting tab.

2.      Select Dashboards.

The default Dashboard

Each view in your Analytics account displays a default Dashboard (called “My Dashboard”) that is pre-populated with a number of widgets showing your site’s traffic as measured via certain key metrics and dimensions: a timeline for number of users, a geomap of sessions, a table of sessions by browser, timelines for bounce rate and goal conversions, etc. The default Dashboard may be sufficient for your needs, but if not, you can customize it by adding or rearranging the widgets, adding reports to the Dashboard, removing unwanted widgets, or filtering the data displayed. You can also create additional Dashboards, devoted to different aspects of your site traffic.

Create your Dashboard

To create a Dashboard, navigate to your view, then:

1.      Select the Reporting tab.

2.      Select Dashboards.

3.      Click +New Dashboard.

4.      In the Create Dashboard dialog, select either Blank Canvas (no widgets) or Starter Dashboard (default set of widgets).

5.      Give your Dashboard a descriptive title, and then click Create Dashboard.

The first dashboard you will want to create should include the top things you check most often in Google analytics for each of your websites. These could include:

1. Active visitors

2.  Audience overview

3. Location

4. New vs. returning visitors

5. Traffic sources

6. Organic keywords

7. Social referrals

8. Top content

9. Conversions

Add widgets to your Dashboard

A Dashboard can have one or more instances of the following kinds of widgets:

·         Metric: displays a simple numeric representation of a single selected metric.

·     Timeline: displays a graph of the selected metric over time. You can compare this to a secondary metric.

·    Geomap: Displays a map of the selected region, with the specified metric plotted on the map. However the map to see the actual metric values.

·         Table: Displays up to 2 metrics describing the selected dimension, laid out in tabular format.

·        Pie: Displays a pie chart of the selected metric grouped by a dimension. Mouse over a slice to see the specific metric values.

Bar: Displays a bar chart of the selected metric grouped by up to 2 dimensions. Mouse over a slice to see the specific metric values.

Standard vs. Real-time widgets

Some of the available widgets can display their data in real-time. These widgets update the metrics automatically (standard widgets, by comparison, update when you load or refresh the Dashboard).

Real-time widgets can display only the Active Users or Page views metrics, depending on the widget. The following widget types are available as real-time widgets:

·         Counter: Displays a count of the active users on your site. You can optionally group these users by a selected dimension.

·         Timeline: Displays a timeline graph of page views on your site for the past 30 to 60 minutes.

·         Geomap: Displays a map showing where your active users are coming from.

·         Table: Plots a table of your active users against up to 3 selected dimensions.

Add a linked report directly to your Dashboard

Another way to link a report to your Dashboard is to add it directly from the Analytics reporting tool.

1.      Locate or create the report you want to see in your Dashboard.

2.      Click Add to Dashboard below the report title. 

3.      Select an existing Dashboard, or create a new one by clicking New Dashboard. 

4.      Select the check boxes for the Dashboard widgets you want to include (e.g., table, pie chart, timeline). You can add up to 2 widgets per report to your Dashboard. You can change the widget titles using the Click to Edit links.

5.      Click Add to Dashboard.

Your new linked report widget opens on the Dashboard you selected. Use the widget title link to open the underlying report.

Different Types of Dashboards

1. General Analytics Dashboard

Get a glimpse of everything: SEO, social, referral traffic and more.

Metrics:

·         Unique visitors

·         Unique visitors from SEO, social media

·         How people find your website: organic, referral, direct

·         Top keywords (non-branded)

·         Top vewied pages

·         Social networks sending the most traffic

·         Referral websites (excludes major websites like Google and social networks)

2. SEO Analytics

My favourite Google Analytics dashboard. Learn your top keywords, locally searched keywords, and even what people are searching to find specific product/service pages. In my case it would be Word Press SEO, but you can adjust the filter to include your own product/service. If you’re looking for more Google Analytics SEO dashboards, hit that link.

 Metrics:

·         Unique visitors from SEO

·         Top keyword (non-branded)

·         Chicago keywords (for local SEO, change this to your city)

·         Keywords related to “Word Press SEO” (a service I offer – change this to one of yours)

·         Search engines used: Google, Yahoo, Bing…

·         Top viewed pages from SEO

·         Cities finding your website through search

3. Social Media Analytics

Find out what social networks are driving the most traffic, along with other useful social data. This dashboard breaks down most main social networks into their own widget. Most of these widgets were taken from Sharon Hall’s Google Analytics dashboards. And, I know. My social media is a pretty weak right now. Stay tuned.

Metrics:

·         Visits from each major social network

·         Most socially shared content

·         Top “socially referred” pages

·         Location of social media visitors

4. Geography Dashboard

Especially if you’re doing local marketing, you might want to know where your visitors are from. Try using filters in the “maps” widget to cross reference it with a specific piece of data.

Metrics:

·         Visits by city

·         Visits by state

·         Visits by continent

5. Mobile Analytics

Have a mobile website? This custom dashboard might be telling you to get one. Or if you already have a mobile site, are people finding what they need or are they bouncing away? On Ipad? Iphone? Check it out.

Metrics:

·         What % of visitors are mobile

·         What mobile devices they’re using

·         Top mobile content

·         Top Ipad content

·         Top Iphone content

·         Average time on site for mobile visitors

·         Bounce rate by mobile device

6. Entrances/Exits

Where do people enter your site, and where do they leave? Use this custom Google Analytics dashboard to find the pages where people leave your site the most. This may indicate you need to improve that page’s content.

Metrics:

·         What pages people enter your site most

·         What pages people exit your site most

·         Average pages viewed per visit

·         Bounce rates

·         Pages with the highest bounce rate

7. Technical Dashboard

This one may be more useful than you think. For example, if you know the pages with the slowest load time, you know you need to optimize them to load faster. Plus lots of other great technical data.

Metrics:

·         Average page load time

·         Slowest loading pages

·         Operating systems used

·         Bounce rate by browser

·         Average time on site

·         Days between visits