Now I'm taking a big leap of faith by assuming Google Analytics is your preferred arena for tracking your website data.
So let me explain the importance of having a Google Analytics custom dashboard to help you  make the right strategic decisions to succeed with your digital marketing efforts.
I'll be honest, navigating your Google Analytics custom dashboard can become a tedious effort to acquire information needed to make an assessment of your online metrics. The worst part is, once you manage to find it, this same process will need to be repeated the next time around.
What is a Google Analytics Dashboard?
Most users would be accustomed to the standard reporting dashboard when they first log into Google Analytics. The standard dashboard has its advantages but sometimes it's like finding a needle in a haystack, except you're throwing that needle back in each time you log in – Onerous I know!
Dashboards have a number of purposes such as grabbing bits of data from different reports and assembling them into an easy to understand format. You can store up to 20 dashboards per profile and within each of these dashboards we can add a maximum of 12 widgets, with a widget representing a unique report/type of data you require.
Understanding the Custom Dashboard
Most of us understand the power of Google Analytics and how it makes analyzing your website traffic that much easier, but don't you think the standard reporting is a little thin for savvy business owners?
This is where a Custom Dashboard can help!
By taking the custom route you can amalgamate data which otherwise would be difficult to procure under the Standard Reporting dashboard. I switched to using a Google Analytics Custom Dashboard to easily access the website data I require in a quick manner plus the ease of reproducing these reports is helpful.
Note from Ms. Ileane:
I wanted to share a video with you with step-by-step instructions for creating the custom dashboard in Google Analytics. Damion Brown from Data Runs Deep was kind enough to record this video for us. Show him some LUV and visit his blog when you're done watching.Â
Creating A Custom Dashboard in Google AnalyticsÂ
What Should I Include In My Custom Dashboard?
Before I explain the “how” element, I would strongly recommend determining the “what”.
A well structured analytics dashboard will answer a few imminent questions so you can determine your site's performance. The Starter Dashboard is good for a quick website checkup as you'll be presented with data such as Visits, Average Visit Duration, Duration by Country/Territory to name a few.
If you run a local business, mobile or international traffic (as an example) is probably of little value to you. Below are a few key questions to consider with your dashboard:
- Am I receiving less, more or the same level of traffic? I will include page views so if my traffic is increasing but there isn't an equivalent rise in page views, it's worth investigating the pages per visit.Â
- Do my visitors hang around or scoot off? Key metrics: Average Visit Duration and Bounce Rate. If you run a mini site, sure one page is sufficient to present your good material but this might not be the case for a larger site. Â Be sure to understand the context of the data for each individual website.
- Who Are my Visitors? Your primary traffic sources would include Visits by Traffic Type, Organic, Paid, Direct and Other.
- Are My Visitors Obeying Instructions? Obeying is a strong term to use but if you're an online marketer, your website will have a purpose and this can be measured by the Goal Conversion Rate. My approach is to establish a unique dashboard for site goals. This makes it dead easy to identify the % of visitors who are doing what I want.
That's basically it, but I will add the following caveats:
1. I have only touched on the concept of an actionable custom dashboard, but you can definitely have more than one. I would recommend limiting too many variables in your dashboard as you might become overwhelmed. If there are several key data points, try and separate them across different dashboards e.g. Site Overview, SEO Metrics and Goal Performance.
2. The other point regarding the Google custom dashboard is that they display the “what” and not the “why”. The “why” element can only be recognized once you dissect the data. The purpose of a custom Google Analytics dashboard is to quickly check information and then prioritize the elements which require attention. It's important to know why things are happening before you show others to avoid the dreaded “So what's happened here?”
How To Set Up Your Google Analytics Dashboard
This section would require a post on it's own, however, it's very easy to set up your custom Google Analytics Dashboard. If you require a step-by-step tutorial, please refer to Google's quick tutorial here or for a visual tutorial watch the embedded video above, or head over to Sharon Hurley Hall's tutorial over at The Daily Egg.
Types of Google Custom Dashboards
#1 The Conversion Custom Dashboard
The conversion dashboard does exactly what you would expect – track conversions! This can range from Ms. Ileane determining her email list subscriptions to e-commerce purchases and having them all in one area is truly poetry in motion for analytics lovers.
If you are still insure on the need for a conversion based custom dashboard, then let me share a scenario with you. What if you wanted to know the exact sources of traffic which was providing the most goal completions – Wouldn't it a whole lot easier to determine where to allocate your marketing budget?
If you are interested in running this type of dashboard, click here.
#2 The Site Engagement Custom Dashboard
What does it really mean when your blog has a 85% bounce rate? Firstly, why is it this percentage and what action can you take? It's time you dig deep to find out.
I will generally set up a custom dashboard which includes “Pages/Visit, “Average Visit Duration” and “Bounce Rate” to determine which pages are performing the best. You can also add Real Time data to your custom dashboard.
Click here to use a pre-configured dashboard which focuses on these metrics.
Now you have the answers at your finger tips in terms of which pages are gaining more traction and the sources of traffic which are providing these engaged visitors.
#3 The Traffic Google Analytics Dashboard
Would you like to see data on which countries your visitors are arriving from and the pages they are landing on?
You are in luck as the traffic custom dashboard is deal for this exercise and you can use the pre-configured dashboard here, however please add your own brand keywords.
There will be some effort required on your end with the “Visits – Organic Non-Brand” and “Visits – Organic Brand” widgets. Simply replace “yourbrandkeywordshere” with your keywords.
Once you're done customising you'll have a good overview of the type of traffic on your website but feel free to test the widgets accordingly.
I hope you have a better handle of  your Google Analytics dashboard and importance of customizing to quickly gauge how well your site is doing and the actions needed to improve where necessary. It helps to review your Google Analytics custom dashboard setups regularly to ensure you are receiving the information you need and this might be a matter of adding or removing certain widgets. In no time will you have a solid understanding of your site's health which you can swallow in small bits.
Check out these other cool custom dashboards shared by Google Analytics users throughout the community.
All the best with your tracking!
Please let me know what you think about Google Analytics Custom Dashboards and which one is your favorite in the comments below!
UPDATE: Here's a cool dashboard you can add to your Google Analytics account that will help you quickly measure your email marketing. See the article and download the dashboard from Campaign Monitor here
Google Analytics is a very relevant tool, just a shame I do not have access to it for the time being. It would be very useful for me to keep on working.
Hi Espagne, that is a shame but hopefully you can install it in due course as you’ll start to see some real value from your statistics.
Hello Kapil after reading this article i shout like wooooooo. really bro you explain every thing easily. Google Analytics ia an awesome tool,Really in every field Social media,Adsense and live traffic and other features help me on my blog working . Best feature i like is Live traffic when it shows that 10-12 people reading your article i got happy :). Again thanks for you time if you have more silent feature about you can share with us.
Wow, nice article Kapil ! I’ve never actually considered using the dashboard that much, I usually just skip to concrete analytics, but after reading this post, I might give it a try and actually add some useful stuff in there, so I’ll perhaps manage to have all the important things just in one page. Thanks ! 🙂
Google Analytics is one of the most important tool in SEO. In this scenario its importance is very high and every SEO experts should get knowledge about it and try to get perfection in this tool. Your shared points are very important to learn about the technicalities of Google analytics. Before a week i tried to set my goals on Google Analytics for my new website but failed. Actually i am learning about it therefore i will request you if you can shared some briefly introduction and technical points that how to set goals in analytics.
Hi Jean – thanks for stating the importance of Google Analytics (GA) and this article was a good segway from Ileane’s last post which provided a solid introduction to GA. It might not have enough real estate in this comment box to dive into setting up goals but happy to send you an email if you like. If I were to summarise, you need to find the profile you plan adding goal(s) to, click the parent name before you see the profile listing.. Now on the right side you’ll see an option to ‘edit or ‘delete’ your profile. Click edit and then you will be presented with ‘goals’. Now you simply select a set which contains your future goals.
Kapil Jekishan thanks a lot for this information and for you time.
Thanks for posting another informative post. Sharing your past work experience made the whole post interesting.
Thanks Angelina – I like to refer back to my own experiences as it helps to explain the process or a concept in a manner which I can explain a lot more clearly.
I notice a lot of people install analytics without setting goals..i call this vanity analytics..LOL they just like to see the numbers go up and down (i did this a lot for corporates).
There are a copule of things about google analytics i want to point out: Firstly – i think the way they calculate bounce rate is a bit flawed..correct me if i’m wrong but if i open a browser and went to a site A (spent 10 mins on there) then i open another tab within the same browser to go to site B (spent 10 mins on there) and then closed my browser – google analytics will record Site A and Site B and 100 bounce..? so it’s a bit misleading
The second thing was that there are alternatives to google analytics..i understand why people stick to google analytics as it’s the brand leader etc but there are better alternatives with easier dashboards especially for local business who just want to concentrate on adding value to their business instead of watching analytics..
Hi Greg – These are definitely valid points you’ve raised. My one criticism of Google Analytics is their approach to measuring the bounce rate of a website. GA cannot truthfully identify how long a visitor has stayed on your website, unless they carry out another like e.g. page load. Most of your visitors will show up as having stayed on your site for 0 seconds despite the fact they could have spent a few minutes or more checking out a video or reading through a page.
The reason why I’ve stuck with GA isn’t entirely because it’s Google’s very own measurement tool but because we are creatures of habit and once something works, we stick to it. In saying that, I can appreciate there are viable alternatives such as Clicky, Piwick or Open Web Analytics.
The thing is google actually knows about the correct bounce rate but the user (us) don’t.. I don’t get it.maybe if we take up the paid version of analytics it will show up correctly..LOL 🙂
Google Analytics is important if you want to succeed online. Only a few knows how to interpret this data and you have explained it as clearly for newbies to understand.
Rose
This post was really cool and informative for me pal, many thanks,
thanks for sharing and have a great friday 😀
Wow, thanks for the great post. I need to start paying better attention to all the Google Analytics provides. This was a big help and time saver for us.
Thanks again!
It’s a pleasure Stephen, sometimes its easy to forget about the breadth of data Google Analytics can provide.
Hello Kapil,
As long as this might sound funny, i still don’t know how to properly use the Google analytic. But i do know how to use it to boost traffic, like knowing where i get my traffic and focus my all there. aside this, i don’t actually use it for any other things.
You did bring some lovely usage and for that, i say thanks 🙂
Hey Babanature, at least you’re in there using it for some purpose rather than not using it at all. If you have identified variables which are helping you to increase traffic and web engagement, keep doing what you’re doing 🙂
I do love Google Analytics- but you’ve opened my eyes to a few ways I can make it even better and more useful- thanks!
Hmmm. I’ve never really paid attention to customizing dashboards. Thanks for this
Miss Ileane! Thank you so much for this post. I can’t tell you how helpful I have found it. I have too many sites and spend far too little time on some of them. This will help me know better where to focus my precious time.
The link to the dashboard site is an excellent resource that I quickly added to my Delicious account. Yay!
Google Analytics is awesome but it’s too detailed and a little overwhelming. I still find myself using statcounter for basic day to day monitoring of my site.
Great article. Checking your google analytics is an absolute must and totally vital to knowing whats working for you and what’s not.
Thanks for this great blog post, Kapil. I always had been used Google Analytics to keep my eyes on how to increase my blog traffic… I have learnt something new to maximize the potential of my blogs with your superb guide.
Thanks for this awesome blog post, Kapil
No worries John.
It’s good to hear you’ve already implemented Google Analytics in your blog so now take it one step further by setting the dashboards up so you only see what’s important to you.
Awesome use of analytics. I was looking for making better use of custom dashboard and this helped me a lot.
This is great news Ankit – very timely post for your current situation. Good luck with setting them up.
According to me Google analytics is the best tool for bloggers for tracking and analysing their blogs. Loved reading your article. custom dashboard in Analytics is really useful. Thank you.
Hi Kapil, I use Google Analytics and it is really very helpful. From you post I’ve learnt a lot of new things. Thanks for sharing.
Hey Kapil, I appreciate your interest for posting such an essential topic. This is very helpful for all the bloggers. Keep going!
Thanks for your encouragement Jason. It’s great to see what a loyal and upbeat reader base Ms. Ileane has developed. All the best with your analytics 🙂
thanks for sharing with us…your experience made this post informative .
This article helps me a lot in understanding more about the Google Analytics. I have used it but sometimes I had difficulty understanding and interpreting it. Thanks for these useful info!
Google Analytic’s is important if you want to succeed online. Only a few knows how to interpret this data and you have explained it as clearly for newbies to understand.
I’m glad this post has provided you with a better grounding on GA dashboards. Thanks Charles
Very nice tutorial. You just explained a very technical task so easily. But I can’t see the video. I think there is problem with the player.
I love the custom dashboard on GA because it let’s me have an output on specific traffic that I want to see that my website is doing on the web. Anyway, I will also try the custom dashboard sites that you’ve suggested here in your blog. Thanks Kapil For Sharig hat much good post.
I love the custom dashboard on GA because it let’s me have an output on specific traffic that I want to see that my website is doing on the web. Anyway, I will also try the custom dashboard sites that you’ve suggested here in your blog. Thanks Kapil For Sharig hat much good post.
Hi Kapil,
Thanks for all the tips for setting a Custom Google Analytics Dashboard. A really helpful blog post.
Hi Kapil, great post dude. You have covered really very helpful points. Thanks for sharing.
Great post Kapil, I even liked the video on creating a Custom Dashboard in Google Analytics. Thanks for sharing it.
Hey Raj – I’m glad this has helped you, however as much as I’d like to take credit for the video, this honor goes to Damian Brown.
Hi Kapil, I use Dash board, but I’ve missed few important points which you have mentioned in your post. Thanks for sharing such an informative article.
Great post and included almost all important points related to Analytic. Pictures making more easy to understand, Thanks for sharing
Hello Kapil,
Thanks for all the tips for setting a Custom Google Analytics Dashboard. A really helpful blog post.
hi Kapil,
a very nice share
the google analytics is a tool of immense importance. You have beautifully thrown light to some of the rarely known features which are embedded in the analytics.
It is much easier to understand these things, when people like you, who have first hand experience with his, write a guide. I use Google Analytics for all my sites, because it is a great motivation factor when just starting up to see trafic coming to it even after the first days of promoting. Good stuff here!
Hi Stephen – The best way to explain a concept is to do it yourself and I hope this has come through in my writing. Once you have a better handle of where your traffic is coming from and the content which resonates with your audience, you’ll be in a stronger position to use your time more effectively. Good luck 🙂
Great post this information helped me alot. I will need to go back to analytics and do some tweeking. Good write up.
I have just discovered the potential analytics really has. I totally agree with your points of view, as using the customization possibilities could help us improve the user experience and bring more traffic to our sites.
There is lot to GA than most would think – try the various custom dashboards I’ve provided links to (depending on your business) and you’ll notice how much easier it is to see what you need.
Hey Kapil, Thanks for this detailed guide about Google Analytics. It’s really very helpful especially for a new blogger like me. It helped me in doing the setup of my analytics account.
Hi Vikram – great news, you’re well underway to discovering the power of this tool. Once you get a feel for the system, then try setting up your custom dashboards so you don’t feel overwhelmed.
Hey Kapil, I’m just getting familiar with google analytics and webmaster tools and this is a great reference for me to look into. Although I have been blogging for a while I’m just realizing the importance of tracking the traffic coming in. Shame on me! LOL But I know it will help to know what you have to do to improve incoming traffic. Thanks for sharing!
My pleasure Sherman! Good to hear you’re also employing Google’s Webmaster Tools and in terms of coming to the analytics party a little late, don’t be silly….It’s better you realize sooner than later to make the necessary adjustments. Hope it works well for you.
Thanks a lot for explaining what Google Analytics Dashboard is all about. I will give it a try.
google analytics is great than any other than traffic counter..
its provide a perfect traffic on your blog.. its a goolge app so it might be trustful frnds
hi Kapil,
Thanks for sharing the concept of Google Analytics tool. Its such a wonderful tool that provides complete statistics about your website and also provides real time traffic. It would be great if you can share some important key features of Google Webmaster tool too. 🙂
great post kapil
yes analyutics is a great tool to keep track of user behavior on your site. and you have explained each and every thing in an easy way. thanks for this article.. i will try to apply these things on my google analytics account
If you like using custom dashboards, guys , i would also advise the custom dashboards, reports and advanced segments over at CustomReportSharing.com. Tons of free ones there for social media, mobile, SEO, PPC, etc.
Hey Evan – good tip on customreportsharing.com. That’s definitely the next step once you’ve had a good feel for custom dashboards. I was having a look through there before writing this post so it’s a timely reminder.
a hyper informative post. Thanks a lot for the share. I was unware about most of the tools of GA mentioned above . Thanks again..
I agree with the thought of creating a cutom dashboard with option which I require and not the deafult standard reporting version. however, I don’t deny it’s not that easy as I completely messed up arranging all, but the result is good and worth the effort.
Hi Kumar – have you tried to start the process again? If my instructions aren’t clear, I’d recommend having another view of Damion’s video as he explains it with ease.
I will definitely try that out.. Just wanted to have ample time understanding it and doing it the write way don’t wanna end up nowhere again…
Nothing to say its awesome.With this guide and video helps me to analyze my blog analytics and give a better chance to track the visitors and their interests.
I use Google Analytics all the time for many data purposes of Internet Dreams.
I never had the urge or the need to create my own custom Google dashboard.
One thing I had to adjust was to let Google Analytics send me an overview of the stats of the traffic everyday.
Very informative.
I also use Google Analytics, but wasn’t knowing that it has such a great utility too.
Well after reading your i have a rough idea about what and how to use it in a proper way.
keep sharing!!!
Hi Kapil,
I started with Google Analytic as an alternative to Jetpack Stats. I found it somewhat easier and somewhat tricky than Jetpack stats. The three things which I generally pay attention to are the total traffic which I received, from which countries and the bounce rate of visitors.
Creating custom dashboards is something new to me and am definitely going to give it a try.
Thanks.
I used to trust on wordpress dashboard stats earlier, but Google analytics is more detaild and comprehensive way of looking at your site’s performance. Thanks for the informational article!
Usually, I used to access my google analytics dashboard for my websites to know the number of visitors, bounce rate of the visitors, geographic area from which i get visitors etc….. But most interesting factor in google analytics is in which page more visitors landing….. It helps to screw my website more.
I still don’t have Google analytic ( shame on me). Have been downplaying it and its the high time I have it installed.
Kuddos for this article. I’ve been using GA for a long time but was always intimidated with the interface and never harnest it’s full potential. I feel I’m getting a little bit closer now 🙂
Nice one Boomer – it can be a little daunting at first because of the number of components but hopefully I’ve helped ease the process. Good luck with it.
Thank you very much for this article! I’ m struggeling a bit with google analytics and to be honest- I have no clue how to use it! 🙂 but its such an important tool, so THX for your advice,
Chris
Kapil, thank you for a very good insight on something that I already have (google analytics) but never realized that it could be customized like how you detailed.
I never really looked any further on how to interpret nor how to use it either. I just check how many visitors I have from the day before and from where.
Great Post!
Hi Kapil, I have reached this page exactly at the time I really required it. I have been using Google analytic for some time and was planning some strategy of using it to useful extent. This article is really helpful. Thanks for sharing.
hi kapil – i need to know, is there a limit to the number of custom reports that can be made on google analytics?
Hi Jacob,
There is a limit of 20 custom dashboards if that’s what you’re referring to.
Hey Kapil,
Thanks for this detailed information on setting up a dashboard. I’ve been studying how to use google analytics for the past couple of weeks and have been trying to figure out how to really set up the metrics behind it.
I set up jetpack plugin for wordpress and it gives me some good data, but I like to get deeper and see how what do I have to do to get more traffic, more engagement and more conversions and the examples you left gives me some great ideas.
Thanks for sharing!
Good work Sherman – Jetpack isn’t too bad but if you’re really looking for in depth data to understand your audience, give Analytics a proper go. Hope it works out.
Hey kapil,
Nice post and Thanks for sharing this post with us. Yes, Google Analytics is the best tool to keep track our blog and you explain everything so beautifully. Now I am also thinking to customizing my dashboard.
Excellent Guide, I have been looking for this kind of guide so that i can setup my Google analytics Dashboard. we can track our main things of our website in Google analytics now. They helps a lot to gather a lot of data. 🙂
Thanks
Thanks James – I’m glad you found it helpful.
Hi Kapil,
There are some good custom dashboard, I like the one with engagement. It gives a good picture of how the users are engaging on the site….Google Analytics has already started gathering data from data hub, so it makes a real sense to create a dashboard for it….
Hi Sanjeev – I started off with engagement and still refer to it (definitely makes life easier). But with each site, I have different objectives / different dashboard..feel free to experiment.
I used Google analytics to monitor my website but now I have stop using it due to inability to understand the dashboard very well. But now I can go back and start using it again
Cool article. And it seems like a lot of people will use Google. I use it and yes I find that the custom dashboard is a bit overwhelming. I just use the basics.
Hi,
Found this site while trying to get my HTML code from Feedburner- this site is full of awesome tips, which i need. Thanks for the post and have a great day on purpose Kapil!
google analytcs is the best tool i search till now for keyword research and all .
Very good Article creating a custom dashboard and really i had no idea about this. Keep writing some article about Webmaster also and what could be do other things in Google analytic
Many people new to AdWords wonder what this tab even is – in fact the tab is irrelevant for some AdWords advertisers. The auto targets tab is a component of Google’s product listing ads.