Spend Less Time Sifting Through Google Analytics

It's hard to believe that we've had this tool around for 11 years ever since Google launched the service in November 2005 after acquiring Urchin. Google Analytics has catapulted itself into the most widely used and recognisable freemium web analytics service giving users valuable reports and insights into website traffic. Given the fact that google hardly lets any of its products vegetate or stand still they've released a number of helpful features for teams in UX, Marketing, Management or even a general users to analyse data, and make decisions based on what their visitors are doing. If you're an avid user of GA or a beginner, here are the 6 reports you should all know and be looking at.

• Mobile Performance Report
• Traffic Acquisition Report
• Keyword Analysis Report
• New vs. Returning Visitors
• Bounce Rate vs. Exit Rate Report
• Geo Location Report

If you don't know how to find these reports contact us or subscribe to our blog and all will eventually be revealed. So moving on, having so many reports and a vast amount of data, variables, filters and charts it can easily get overwhelming and time-consuming when extracting exact data to find or fit a certain problem you're having. So kids how do we solve this problem? Break out in song or break out custom dashboards and shortcuts?

Custom dashboards

To create your own custom dashboard, navigate to your account you want to view, then:

• Select the Reporting tab.
• Select Dashboards.
• Click +New Dashboard.
• In the Create Dashboard dialog, select either Blank Canvas (no widgets) or Starter Dashboard (default set of widgets).
• You can also import Dashboard configurations from the Solutions Gallery. Give your Dashboard a descriptive title, then click Create Dashboard.

Once you've created your dashboard you can always edit it to add and remove data widgets and get all the important data you want to see in an instant. Dashboards can also be easily shared with friends and colleagues.

Shortcuts

Shortcuts have quickly become one of my personal favourites since its release in April 2016. Simply navigate to the report you want to create, add your parameters and any additional filters you may want and when you're happy with your data simply click the shortcut button and give it a name. It will now appear in the shortcuts panel on the left in your GA. I've found it works great for quick keyword query comparisons and device split comparisons and will save you a lot of time pulling reports going forward.

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Tags: Data Analysis, google analytics