Share Segment, Dashboard, Goal, and Custom Report Configurations – Even With Yourself

September 5, 2014 by Eric Fettman

You can access Share Assets from the view admin.

In Google Analytics, goals, custom reports, and dashboards are created at the view level. If you want to use that same asset in another view, property, or account – or if you want to share with other Google Analytics users – you can forward a link from the Share Assets screen, accessed from the view admin.

Segments are somewhat different in that they’re accessible in all views within the same Google Analytics account, so you’d share a segment with a different GA user, or potentially with yourself if you happen to maintain GA accounts under different logins.

When you share any asset in this way, you’re not sharing any data, but rather a link that another Google Analytics user can click and then apply to their own views. For example, the link below shares a simple custom report for sessions and bounce rate by referrer, but not any of your actual referral data.

https://www.google.com/analytics/web/template?uid=aw9Z-KwFSFW1PR0BfjmJ0g

This same sharing mechanism allows you to import predefined bundles of segments, dashboards, and custom reports, which you can access by clicking Import from Gallery in the Share Assets screen.

Please share this post:

Device/Browser Inventory for Responsive Testing (Custom Report Template Provided)

August 7, 2014 by Eric Fettman

view at full size

This custom report drills down from Device Category to Browser Version

Before rolling out a responsive or adaptive Website update to your users, it’s important to test the design changes on the same devices and browsers that your visitors are already using.

You can click the following link to import a basic device/browser custom report into one of your Google Analytics views:

https://www.google.com/analytics/web/template?uid=ev-n199TST2suk9H3E2Atg

If you are unable to source physical devices to test on, a fallback option is the device emulator built into Chrome or other available device emulators.

Note that in addition to the Users and Sessions metric, the custom report also includes Bounce Rate, just to demonstrate how current users are (and aren’t) interacting with your site across different devices and browsers.

In fact, if you have not yet incorporated any responsive/adaptive capabilities into your website, you could easily add metrics such as goal conversion rate and return visitors to the custom report to assess the need for a mobile strategy in terms of user counts and associated performance metrics. (Hint: the need is probably more urgent than you may think.)

Please share this post:

View Traffic by Day of the Week

May 30, 2014 by Eric Fettman

view at full size

You can display session by day of the week in a custom report.

Over the last six months, which day of the week saw the most visits to your site?

You won’t find an answer, at least not in aggregated numbers, within the standard Google Analytics reports, but we can easily display this data in a custom report.

First step is to create a custom report in Explorer format, with Day of Week Name defined as the primary dimension and Session (as well as other metrics, such as Bounce Rate, as needed) as the metric.

Once we display the custom report, we can apply Day of Week (as the numbers 0-6) as a secondary dimension so we can sort the report from first day of the week to last (Sunday-Friday). We can also apply alternate displays, such as Percentage or Performance, instead of the default Data display.

Don’t forget to take advantage of custom reports. They’re easy to use and available individually to each user, and they often allow you to display dimensions and metrics in ways that are not possible in the standard reports.

Please share this post:

Use Custom Reports to Isolate and Consolidate Specific Metrics

January 23, 2014 by Eric Fettman

view at full size

This custom report isolates three specific metrics.

Custom reports are a simple yet extremely useful (but underutilized) feature of Google Analytics.

Let’s say that your manager has asked for data about visits and completions of two goals on different device types. Using the standard Mobile > Devices report, you’d have to forward a different report display for each of the two goals, and the reports would contain metrics that your manager hasn’t asked for.

Using a single custom report, you could display visits, goal 1 completions, and goal 2 completions in a single snapshot, without any extraneous metrics.

In this way, custom reports both consolidate and isolate the specific metrics that you want to focus on, and are as helpful for what they do not display as they are for what they do display.

Please share this post:

Create a Simple Custom Report to Display Page Value for Landing Pages

August 8, 2013 by Eric Fettman

Custom report: Page Value for Landing Pages

view at full size

In a custom report, you can display Page Value for landing pages.

Although the Page Value metric is very relevant to landing pages, it does not appear in the Landing Pages report.

Fortunately, you can quickly define a custom report as follows to display Page Value for landing pages.

Dimension: Landing Page

Metrics: Entrances (as a related data point), Page Value

If the standard reports don’t provide the combination of dimensions and metrics that you need, you can in most instances create a custom report that fits the bill.

Please share this post:

Use a Custom Report to Aggregate Visits by Hour

October 29, 2012 by Eric Fettman

view at full size

To aggregate metrics by hour, a Custom Report is required.

If you click change Visitors Overview report from the default Day view to the Hour view, you might not get what you expect.

What the report shows is not an aggregated view by hour for the time period selected, but rather the number of visits that occurred during each hour on each day.

Because this would equate to 720 individual data points for a 30-day month, this view seems to be practical only if you want to pinpoint the most active points in time over the course of that month.

This view can be more usable if you narrow the date selection down to a day or two; in this case, there are few enough data points on the main over-time graph to be intelligible.

But what if you want a consolidated view of hourly activity?

For this, you can easily set up a Custom Report using the Hour dimension. (The Hour of Day dimension, which provides the same non-aggregated data as the Day view in Standard Reports, won’t do the trick.)

It’s better to select Flat Table instead of Explorer format, since this suppresses the over-time graph, which would unhelpfully display only visits by day for the time period selected. If you want to chart the 24 aggregated hourly data points, you can export from the Custom Report into a spreadsheet and create a line or column chart there.

As a related note, if the time zone indicated in your profile settings is not correct for you, you can change it at any time, but keep in mind that this change will not apply retroactively to data that Google Analytics has already captured.

Please share this post: