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You are here: Home / Analysis / New GA Feature: Custom Dashboards

New GA Feature: Custom Dashboards

Posted: May 8, 2007 17 Comments

Add To Dashboard At the top of each report you’ll see an ‘Add to Dashboard’ button. Simply click the button and GA will add the report to your dashboard. I’m not sure if there is a limit to the number of reports that can be added to the dashboard, but I would not add more than 6 or 7. Remember, the primary purpose of the dashboard is to provide a high level view of your website’s health. If you see something unusual in your dashboard then you should investigate further.

Customizing Dashboard Layout

The dashboard is not static, meaning you can re-arrange the layout of the reports. Simply drag and drop the reports on your dashboard as you would a widget on your Google Homepage (aka iGoogle). Just place the mouse pointer over the report header and it will turn into a hand. Then click and drag!

Dashboards: A Recommendation

When using your dashboard I recommend comparing two date ranges. The reason is that looking at the data, without any historical context, is useless. For example, if your dashboard reports that your conversion rate was 5% for the last week what would you think? You wouldn’t know what to think because you don’t know if 5% is good or bad. Adding a date comparison shows how the data has changed over time. The only downside of date comparison and dashboards is that Google Analytics will not remember if you applied a date comparison to the dashboard This means that every time you log in you’ll need to reapply the dates you want to compare.

Automated Dashboard Delivery

Another cool feature of the new Custom Dashboards is the ability to have your dashboard EMAILED to you at a regularly scheduled interval (you can read more about the emailed reports, and how to set them up, here). You no longer need to log into GA to check your stats. Just have your dashboard emailed to you every morning. And, when you schedule your emailed dashboard, you can specify that Google Analytics includes a date comparison. So, if you receive your dashboard weekly Google Analytics will compare the last two weeks of data.

Creating Your Own Dashboard: Where to Start

Start by identifying the KPIs vital to your business. Then, find the reports that contain those KPIs and add them to the dashboard. If you’re still having trouble go out and get a copy of Eric Peterson’s book, The Big Book of Key Performance Indicators. Chapter four lists the best KPIs for the four main business models:

If people still need some help I’ll post some dashboard suggestions later. Just leave a comment if you’re interested.

Filed Under: Analysis Tagged With: features, google-analytics, reporting, v2

Comments

  1. Markus Hübner says

    May 15, 2007 at 7:07 am

    Any dashboard suggestion is highly welcome.

    Reply
  2. Sean Carlos says

    May 19, 2007 at 2:06 pm

    While the new dashboard is very impressive, there is one big problem: only one dashboard is supported.

    Ideally, there should be support for role specific dashboards, as was the case in the previous version. The new e-mail a report function is great, but would be most useful in conjunction with personalized overviews, i.e. dashboards, based on an individual’s organizational needs (Executive, Marketing, Technical).

    Reply
  3. Justin says

    May 19, 2007 at 5:31 pm

    Hi Sean,

    The point of the new dashboard is to allow each user to create their own set of applicable reports. In a small organization one person may wear the marketer hat, the CEO hat and the sales hat. However, in larger organizations, different people will fill different roles. Each person can have their own GA account and thus their own dashboard.

    Justin

    Reply
  4. customer-centered says

    June 1, 2007 at 1:13 pm

    The other BIG drawback is the “Custom Dashboards” represent single site data only… though surely many of us have multiple sites and want a report for visitors to all, sent in one email/report instead each site in it’s own email with is horrible if you’re reporting on many sites, as I.

    Reply
  5. Amanda says

    June 20, 2007 at 9:46 am

    I’m having issues with setting up the ecommerce tab view on the dashboard – it seems to default to the site useage tab when I add to the dashboard. Has anyone else experienced this?

    Reply
  6. Justin says

    June 22, 2007 at 12:54 pm

    Hi Amanda,

    You make a fantastic observation! As of right now, you can’t add the e-commerce tab view to the dashboard. I think it is a feature that is sorely needed.

    Justin

    Reply
  7. zahir says

    August 9, 2007 at 5:35 am

    Hi,

    Everywhere i look, i see people stating that the reports can be dragged and dropped in Analytics. I’m using the newest version of GA and firefox and cant seem to be able to do this at all.

    As well as this it says i can create my own report. I’d like a report to include:

    Campaign Name | Campaign Cost | Date range | Traffic | Revenue generated | ROI %

    But i cant seem to think how this can be done.

    Any ideas will be appreciated.

    Regards

    Zahir

    Reply
  8. Justin says

    August 13, 2007 at 7:39 am

    Hi Zahir,

    I’m not sure why your dashboard is not working. It may just be some confusion re: the capabilities of GA. You can only drag and drop the report widgets on your dashboard. You can not drag other reports or navigation items.

    As for the report you want to create, that’s not possible. You can not specify which columns appear in a Google Analytics report. What’ you’ll need to do is find the report that provides as much of the information as possible and then tweak it in Excel. From the looks of it, I think you want to use the AdWords Analysis report.

    Justin

    Reply
  9. Jaan Kanellis says

    November 20, 2007 at 2:20 am

    I cant believe we can still only create one dashboard at a time for each if our clients. Terrible.

    Reply
  10. SEO Boot Camp says

    July 10, 2008 at 2:10 am

    I enjoyed your writing style and I’ve added you to my Reader. Keep these posts coming.

    Reply
  11. Eric says

    September 11, 2008 at 12:13 pm

    I want to email monthly reports of my website’s dashboard to my sales staff. When I do this, GA emails the dashboard …as well as the “expanded” report for each item on the dashboard (six pages!). Sales only needs the dashboard. Is there a way to turn off the additional “expanded” reports?

    Reply
  12. Justin Cutroni says

    September 11, 2008 at 4:26 pm

    Hi Eric,

    Unfortunately there is no way modify the report. GA will always send the dashboard AND the “real” version of the reports listed on the dashboard.

    Thanks for the question,

    Justin

    Reply
  13. Ben says

    September 30, 2008 at 11:26 am

    Any thoughts on how to setup a set of customised dashboards and have these propogate across all users for the profile?

    Large marekting department and generally the user base is a little adverse to Google Analytics but requires the top level dashboard views I’ve setup – sadly I’ll then need to replicate these across several accounts (and several profiles for each account)…

    All suggestions welcome!!

    Reply
  14. Justin Cutroni says

    October 1, 2008 at 10:05 pm

    Hi Ben,

    Unfortunately, a dashboard is specific to a user. If you have a large number of people that need to access a single dashboard you may want to create a single login for your users. Otherwise you’ll need to recreate the dashboard for each user.

    Thanks for the question,

    Justin

    Reply
  15. Julian says

    April 28, 2009 at 6:15 pm

    On a similar line as Ben, is there any way I can copy the dashboard in one profile (website) so that I can use the same dashboard layout on other profiles within the same account? I own many sites with the same business model and it would be great to be able to check all the sites on the same kind of dashboard layout (without doing the work manually, of course).

    Reply
    • Justin Cutroni says

      April 29, 2009 at 2:19 pm

      Hi Julian,

      Unfortunately no, there is no way to copy a dashboard. Or even create a default dashboard. I think Google has a long way to go in terms of sharing some of the personal settings in GA, like dashboards, segments, etc.

      Thanks for the question!

      Justin

      Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Analytics Talk » Welcome to the New Google Analytics says:
    May 8, 2007 at 12:52 pm

    […] An entirely new reporting interface New date range selector Custom dashboards Emailed reports Sticky URLs (you can now use use your Back button!) PDF Report Export with Vector Graphics New help center […]

    Reply

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