Google has released new Google Analytics Dashboards that you may be unaware of. I have gone through most of them and found three that I believe once loaded into your Google Analytics account, will give you greater insight into your website’s traffic, its social networking, and your website’s load time.
Google Analytics Logo
What is Google Analytics?
Google Analytics (GA) is a service offered by Google that generates detailed statistics about a website’s traffic and traffic sources and measures conversions and sales. The product is aimed at marketers as opposed to webmasters and technologists from which the industry of web analytics originally grew. It is the most widely used website statistics service.
The basic service is free of charge and a premium version is available for a fee.
GA can track visitors from all referrers, including search engines and social networks, direct visits and referring sites. It also displays advertising, pay-per-click networks, e-mail marketing and digital collateral such as links within PDF documents.
Why were these Custom Dashboards, Advanced Segments created?
Google Analytics can be challenging. It’s such a robust tool with a variety of reports, filters, and customizations that for a new user it can be overwhelming to figure out where to look first for the data and insights that will enable you to make better decisions. That is why we’ve created the Google Analytics Solution Gallery.
How to load the new top Dashboards, Advanced Segments, and Custom Reports into your current Dashboard?
First you will need a Google Analytics account. To create a Google Analytics account, you will need a Google Account. You can get one by signing up for one of their email accounts, called Gmail. You can also sign up for a Google Account directly.
1. Go Google Analytics: www.google.com/analytics.
2. Click “Sign Up” in red in the top right-hand corner of the screen
3. Fill in the required information then click “Create my account” at the bottom of the screen.
4. Follow the onscreen directions and fill in the information for the website you want Google Analytics to track. You will need to place Google Analytics’ tracking code into the footer or header of your website. You will then need to click to “Verify” button so Google Analytics can verify ownership and that the code is in place.
4. After you have created the account and ownership and code placement has been verified, stay logged in.
5. Go to the Google Analytics Solution Gallery.
6. Choose the solution you want through three on-screen drop-down screens.
7. Once you have made your selection, click “download” and it will take you into your Google Analytics account.
8. Save the solution to the appropriate website profile in your Google Analytics account. The new dashboards are all loaded under a new heading (My Stuff) at the top of the Google Analytics dashboard.
The Three New Google Analytics Dashboards that I Suggest
These are the three new dashboards that I have found most useful. There are far dashboards to choose from though.
The Social Media Dashboard
This dashboard is insane. This dashboard gives you far more information on your website’s social arena than “Social” under “Traffic Sources” (it comes standard with Google Analytics) does.
I added this one onto all of my sites. It was very interesting to see what mobile device was used to view my site most (iPhone).
The Site Performance Dashboard
This is a very insightful dashboard for your website’s speed. It shows you how long your top pages are taking to load, average page load, server load, browser used to visit your site, et cetera.
The Basic Blog Dashboard
This dashboard shows the user the most popular articles on their website, where their audience is coming from, traffic drivers, social sharers (what they are using) e.g. ShareThis, top keywords, landing pages, et cetera.
This information, like with the other dashboards, can be found in other areas on the standard dashboard but it is convenient to have everything in one place and not having to look for anything, especially if you are new to Google Analytics.
Google Analytics Audience Overview
Conclusion
Google Analytics, for the average webmaster (learn more about Google Analytics here), is easy and the most widely used way to read and estimate site traffic. The newly introduced dashboards make it that much easier to understand the information that Google deliveries to you.
Source: Wikipedia
