Custom Dashboard
If you are tired of going through several reports every week or every month, and want to consolidate important data into one page, it’s time to make a custom dashboard. Google Analytics gives you the option of adding a new dashboard under the Dashboard tab. You can either add widgets directly on the dashboard, or add parts of reports by using the “Add to Dashboard” option.
Advanced Segments
Have you ever wished you could filter report data further? Advanced Segments does exactly that for you. This advanced option lets you select up to four segments by which to filter any report. The segments include:
- All visits
- New visitors
- Returning visitors
- Paid search traffic
- Non-paid search traffic
- Search traffic
- Direct Traffic
- Referral Traffic
- Visits with Conversions
- Visits with Transactions
- Mobile Traffic
- Tablet Traffic
- Non-bounce visits
If none of the filters listed above satisfy your needs then create your own custom segment. This post provides a clear example on how to do this.
Shortcuts
When you find yourself looking at a report that you want to access constantly and quickly, add it as shortcut! This advanced option will let you save the report and access it easily. For example, you can add a shortcut to reports that require advanced segment filters to save time.
URL Tagging
Do you want to see how successful a newsletter or press release was? Track how many visits and conversions originated from these types of content by tagging the URLs on them. Simply use the URL Builder to create a traceable URL and then place this URL on the piece of content you want to track. The URL’s performance data can be found under Traffic Sources>Sources>Campaigns.
Multi-Channel Funnels
If you are currently tracking goal conversions in Google Analytics, the Goals tab will show you the number of conversions and conversion sources. However this report only attributes a conversion to the visitor’s last interaction. In other words, if a visitor first came to the site by clicking on a search ad, and then returned to the site directly and completed a conversion, “direct traffic” will appear as the conversion source. With Multi-Channel Funnels, Google Analytics gives you more information regarding other sources that assisted in a conversion.
