How to Use Dashboards in Google Analytics

Over the last few posts, I wrote an introduction to Google Analytics and UTM’s and a guide to tracking conversions.  Those guides will help you get all of your data set up and tracking your users, but you probably want to know what you should be looking at when browsing through your Google Analytics.  There are hundreds of pages and sets of data inside your analytics which can be overwhelming.  You could spend hours going through it all and still not be sure what is going on.  Luckily, there is a feature that makes things much easier.  This feature is called dashboards. 

What are Dashboards in Google Analytics? 

Dashboards are simple pages that include several different graphs and sets of data that correspond to each other.  Usually a dashboard will be built around a particular focus.  For example, you may have an eCommerce dashboard that shows all the important data sets concerning what affects purchases on your site.  Another example would be a content marketing dashboard that helps you see what pages and posts get most traffic from what sources and which convert better. 

By utilizing dashboards, you can easily see all the relevant data you need in a meaningful way without having to hunt through all the pages yourself.  Each set of data and graphs are referred to as a “widget”.  For example, on a content marketing dashboard, you may have a widget that shows the posts with the highest bounce rate so you can see what posts you may want to improve.  You may also include a widget that shows the campaigns from a particular social network that convert the best.  Let’s take a look at an example dashboard. 

In the image above, we have an example dashboard with some widgets that are relevant to tracking eCommerce.  In the top left, we have the “Transactions by Source” widget.  This widget is listing the top sources of traffic sorted by the revenue brought in.  At a quick glance, we can see which sources may be sending more converting users.  The next widget shows us the pages that have the highest amount of exits so we can see pages that we may want to improve.  The pie graphs on the right show us the percentages of the medium that users are coming to the site through.  Finally, we have two example line graphs.  One keeps track of revenue and the other tracks users and sessions.  There are hundreds of different widgets that you could use and they will differ depending on the type of data that you want or need to keep track of. 

How to Set Up Dashboards

When you log in to Google Analytics, you will find the Dashboards along the left navigation like in the image below. 

Your site will already have an example dashboard called “My Dashboard” which has some example widgets to get you started.  However, you will probably want to create different dashboards focusing on different sets of data.  For example, you may have an eCommerce dashboard, a social media tracking dashboard, an email marketing dashboard, and others.  When you first start out, you will likely be unsure where to begin and what types of widgets you want to use.  Fortunately there is a dashboard gallery where you can import many different examples to get going. 

To import a dashboard from the gallery, begin by clicking the “New Dashboard” link like in the image above.  From there you will see a window appear where you can select to create a brand new dashboard.  In the bottom right will be a button labelled “Import from Gallery”. 

Clicking that button will open a new popup that will list hundreds of dashboard examples to choose from.  Browse through the list to find ones that sound relevant to you.  You can always modify the dashboard in the future.  For my example, I will be choosing one titled “Site Performance Dashboard”.  Once you choose one, click the “Import” button underneath it. 

Once the dashboard is imported, you will be redirected to your new dashboard.  Browse through all of your widgets to see what the data says and how useful it is to you.  You may come across a widget that needs to be modified or deleted.  To do so, you can click on one of the icons in the top right corner of the widget which appears when you hover over it. 

Clicking the edit icon will open a new popup that will allow you to modify the title, type, and data sets of the widget.  Take some time to see how each of the widgets in your new dashboard are set up so you can begin to see how these different settings can be tweaked to get the exact data sets and displays that are most helpful for you. 

Make Your Life Easier By Having the Dashboards Emailed to You

For dashboards to be beneficial, you have to get in the habit of checking them once they’re set up.  Google Analytics has options to export or email you the dashboard.  Along the top of the dashboard you will find options for sharing, emailing, and exporting. 

Using the email option, you can set up the dashboard to be emailed to you daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly so you can review it.  Normally I suggest getting the dashboard emailed to you weekly.  Not much will happen each day to receive it daily.  You will end up over-analyzing and spending a lot more time with it.  However, you don’t usually want to wait a month to review the data in case something major changes that may affect your traffic. 

What’s Next? 

Now that you have your UTM’s set up, tracking your eCommerce and conversions, and have your dashboards set up, it’s time to start using this data to improve your site’s traffic and conversions.  The best strategy is to focus on one thing at a time and make small testable changes.  For example, you could start with trying to improve the amount of traffic that comes from social media, so you would want to test different posts and tweets and different times which you can now track using UTM’s.  Or you may want to improve your conversion rates, so you would use an A/B testing service to test different call to actions, headlines, and more. 

In future posts, I will go over more topics for Google Analytics such as filters as well as strategies for improving your conversions.  Be sure to subscribe to my newsletter to be the first to know when the posts are published!