The world of Digital Marketing is evolving every day. Companies are using sophisticated software and tools to analyze their online content. This analysis helps them in improving their published blogs and websites to gain more audience for their content. As the traffic on these websites increases it provides more Leads to the Marketing Team and ultimately leads to business growth.
Google Analytics is one of the most important names among the services used for such analysis work. Due to its reliability and the high variety of tools that it has to offer, almost every major organization is drawn towards this platform. Google Analytics Custom Reports and Google Analytics Dashboards are 2 such tools offered by Google Analytics that can enhance the productivity of your Marketing Teams.
This blog will introduce you to Google Analytics Custom Reports and Google Analytics Dashboards and explain their importance. Furthermore, it will provide a step-by-step guide on how to customize both of these tools to suit your business requirements. Read along to learn more about these 2 popular tools that can revolutionize your Digital Marketing!
Table of Contents
Introduction to Google Analytics Custom Reports
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Google Analytics offers Reports as a default service, that can help you in monitoring your website. However, these Reports are very basic and can not provide a thorough analysis of your online content. This limitation can be avoided by using Google Analytics Custom Reports. It is a service provided by Google Analytics that enables you to customize and build your own Reports from scratch to gain valuable insights. These Google Analytics Custom Reports provide detailed information related to your Website Traffic, Viewer Engagement, Social Media Response, etc.
Creating Google Analytics Custom Reports has been simplified by the various Templates that the Google Analytics platform provides. Moreover, you have the option of adding more features to these Templates according to your needs. This allows you to create a personalized Report which will present information that is relevant to you and will be useful in enhancing your Digital Marketing Campaigns.
To know more about Google Analytics Custom Reports, visit here.
Introduction to Google Analytics Dashboards
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Google Analytics Dashboards is one of the most powerful and essential tools for your Digital Marketing Team today. Google Analytics Dashboards can be understood as a collection of simple Widgets that can be used to quickly visualize your data. With just some clicks, this tool can provide you access to a lot of valuable insights from your company’s website.
Google Analytics as a service has a lot to offer but it can be a little difficult and time-consuming to work with. That’s where Google Analytics Dashboards comes into play. It can simplify your usage of Google Analytics and can assist you in various aspects of Digital Marketing. Following are the 2 essential functions that Google Analytics Dashboards performs:
- Monitoring Website Performance: Understanding performance trends over time can not only help you determine what needs to be improved to make your next effort more successful, but it can also help you understand where breakthroughs have occurred.
- Tracking your Audience: Your digital content is valuable only to the relevant audience. So, you need to ensure that the right kind of audience is regularly visiting your websites and blogs. Google Dashboards helps you with that as it allows you to track the various readers who visit your website daily.
To learn more about Google Analytics Dashboards, visit here.
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Types of Google Analytics Custom Reports
Google Analytics provides you with several in-built Templates to create a Custom Report. Due to this, you are saved from designing the structure of your Google Analytics Custom Reports from scratch. Instead, you can use these Templates as the base and add features of your choice to create your Customized Reports. Some of the popular Google Analytics Custom Reports are:
1) Website Traffic Reports
A website is the official representation of your company’s online presence and its popularity is a good indicator of how well your business is doing. This can be measured by the number of visitors that you get on your website in a certain time interval. This time interval could be weeks or months or hours even in the event of a new product launch.
These Website Traffic Reports explain the specific hours and days when you can expect the highest traffic on your website. Using this information you can plan a more effective Marketing Campaign for your business. These Google Analytics Custom Reports are extremely useful for Business-to-Business(B2B) companies. The output of such Reports is shown in the below image.
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2) Content Performance Reports
Online content like Websites, Blogs, etc. is a great medium to generate Leads for Marketing Teams. This online content is the customer’s go-to resource for information and updates regarding the market trends and new products. So, it is necessary to analyze the performance of the company’s online content. Content Performance Reports will provide you with ample information about the effects of your Marketing Campaigns and will help you to optimize them.
These Google Analytics Custom Reports provide information about various factors like, the content which draws in the most visitors, the most engaging subject matters, the blogs which provide most Leads, etc. Furthermore, you can customize the default Template provided by Google Analytics according to your needs as shown in the below image.
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3 ) Social Media Traffic Reports
Social Media has its importance when it comes to driving website traffic. If you need to know which Social Channel is accessing which page or content, and more importantly, the quality of visitors that these platforms bring to your website, Social Media Traffic Reports will be your best aid.
By using these Google Analytics Custom Reports you will be able to identify which Social Media Platforms are generating the most traffic and how relevant that traffic is to your business. Moreover, you will be able to modify your Marketing Strategies on these platforms and make your posts more engaging. The below image shows how the output of such reports looks.
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4 ) Internal Website Search Reports
You can use these Reports to analyze how visitors interact with your website’s search box. With Internal Website Search Reports, you can see what searches visitors are looking for on your website and how they process search results. If the visitors are leaving your website just after searching some terms, that indicates that you need to add content related to those terms to your website.
These Google Analytics Custom Reports come in handy when you are deciding what content to add and what to remove from your website. Also, these Reports contain the searches made by the users which can provide insights regarding the current demands in the market. You can use that information to your advantage and plan your future moves accordingly. A sample of these Reports is given in the below image.
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Steps to Create Google Analytics Custom Reports
You can easily create Google Analytics Custom Reports by using the multiple Templates provided by Google Analytics by following these steps after logging into your Google Analytics account:
- Step 1: A menu should appear on the left side of the screen. Find and select the Personalization tab from the menu, then select the Custom Reports option from that section as shown in the below image.
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- Step 2: Once you are in the Custom Reports section, click on the ‘+New Custom Report’ button as shown in the below image.
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- Step 3: The New Custom Report menu allows you to name your Custom Report and customize it according to your needs. A Custom Report must contain Report Tab Name, Tab Type, Filter Options, Viewer Options. Now, if you want to have more tabs you should:
- Choose the Explore Report Type for general Reporting work. It will enable you to add a Line Graph and a simple Table.
- Choose the Flat Report Type if you wish to represent your data in multiple rows within the same Table.
- Choose the Map-Overlay Report Type if you wish to analyze and track data on the World Map.
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- Step 4: Now, set the Filters and View Options according to your needs and click on Save.
That’s it! Your Google Analytics Custom Reports can be easily created with these 4 steps.
Steps to Create Google Analytics Dashboards
Google Analytics Dashboards provide a great way to monitor your online content. Follow these steps after logging into your Google Analytics account to create customized Google Analytics Dashboards:
- Step 1: Find the Customization menu, select Dashboards and click on the Create button as shown in the below image.
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- Step 2: You will then have to choose from the following 2 options:
- Blank Canvas: This Template does not provide any Widgets. You can add Widgets according to your requirements.
- Starter Dashboard: This Template provides a default set of Widgets. This will be useful if you are new to the Google Analytics Dashboard.
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- Step 3: After choosing Starter Dashboard Template and naming your Dashboard, click on Create Dashboard. Your Dashboard will be visible as shown in the image below. Your new custom Dashboard will automatically appear for you to see.
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- Step 4(Optional): If you wish to create a Dashboard using the Blank Canvas option then this step is required instead of Step 3. After you select the Create option of Step 2, the options shown in the below image will appear on your screen. You can add these Widgets to your Dashboard as per your choice and then click Save. Your Dashboard will be ready!
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Conclusion
This article introduced Google Analytics Custom Reports and Google Analytics Dashboards. Both of these tools can be immensely beneficial for you while optimizing your Marketing Campaigns. These tools allow you to monitor your website and create Customized Reports that present data relevant to your business. Furthermore, the article provided a step-by-step guide for implementing both of these services.
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Share your understanding of the Google Analytics Custom Reports in the comments section below!