|
This video is going to show you how to create, manage and customize dashboards in your Google Analytics account.
Time Estimate
30 minutes to an hour
Ingredients
- Google analytics account
Directions
- Log in to your Google Analytics (GA) account.
- Determine which view of which property of which account you want your dashboard to be reporting information about.
- You can change your views of properties or accounts either on the homepage or in the top right corner where it displays the account, property and view by hitting the drop down button and selecting between the various accounts, properties and views you have listed.
- Click on reporting on the top menu bar.
- On the left, click on dashboard. Under private, see the default dashboard (My Dashboard) that comes with the GA account and click on that.
- You can click on the New Dashboard link below My Dashboard.
- A box will appear and you would want to put in the title.
- Choose between blank canvass, starter dashboard or click Import from Gallery below (the best option) which contains a ton of templates that people have already created throughout the world. All the heavy lifting has already been done for you in those templates. You can just do some minor tweaks and then you have your custom dashboard. So spend some time in there and look at the templates you might want to use.
- If you decide to use the default dashboard, just change the title and make the adjustments you want to make. You can even move the widgets around.Then click on save.
- You can also click customize dashboard on top right side to customize the widgets you've created.
- If you created goals, go to the left sidebar, go all the way down, click conversions, click Goals and choose which goals you've already created that you want to be displayed on your dashboard or on a particular dashboard.
- You can create multiple dashboards and you just select from the goals you've created and there's be a button just like the one on the left sidebar "Technology" or "Browser & OS".
- On Browser & OS, just click Add dashboard and select from which dashboard you've got created and whatever widget you've displayed on that goal, you'll be able to select which one you want displayed on that particular dashboard. Then click Add to dashboard.
Taste Test
- Go to the homepage of your Google analytics account.
- You'll see the dashboard/s you've created.
Icing on the Cake
- If the client wants you to create their own procedure for this, then create your own procedure. If you have specific instructions from your client, make sure you also document that.
- What you're looking for when you're creating your dashboards is the ability to more intelligently ask yourself questions related to what's happening to your site or property. "Are the visitors to my site coming from X location doing what I want them to do?" If they're not, make some adjustments on your site and then create a dashboard to see if that adjustment is affecting what has been happening in the past. If not, make a different adjustment and track that information and you can do that on your customized dashboard because with Google Analytics and without these dashboards, it's all just uninformed guess work.
