Custom dashboards allow you to filter the information that comes through, selecting specific metrics and segments of your audience to view so that the data is useful and relevant, and fulfils the specific goal of the dashboard. These goals should directly relate to the person that dashboard has been created for – what their interest is and what their desired outcomes are. Therefore before creating a custom dashboard, it is important to ask the following questions:

• Who is going to see this dashboard?
• What aspects of the website are they most concerned with?
• Which metrics will most accurately reflect their success or lack of in this area?

Step-by-Step: Setting Up A Custom Dashboard

Dashboards are shown under Reporting > My Stuff > Dashboards in the left hand menu. Click My Dashboard to see the default dash that GA lays out for you. As you can see, it’s very general and doesn’t offer a whole lot of insight. Let’s fix that.

Start a new dashboard by hitting New Dashboard in the left-hand menu bar.

Next, choose to start with a Blank Canvas – a custom report should be 100% personalised for the intended user. Name it after them, so it’s easy for them to locate when they log in.

Now comes the potentially tricky part – deciding which graphs and data to display as Widgets.

This is why the above questions are so essential – there is a huge range of widgets to choose from and it’s up to you to determine the best ones. Talk to the intended user and find out what numbers are important to them, and add only what they need. Cluttered dashboards are useless and intimidating. If they begin to want more information, you can always add more widgets later.

For this example, we’ll create a dashboard for the member of our SEO team who is purely responsible for acquiring more visitors. Their job is quantity over quality and not related to conversions or goals.

For this person, the following numbers are important:

• How many people came to the site
• How many new visitors came to the site
• What search term new visitors arrived by
• Which websites new visitors are coming from

Of course there could be many other possibilities, such as which locations have directed the most traffic and what language they were using, but an ideal dashboard is simple and can be used almost every day to provide a relevant overview into the user’s interest and goals. Further details can be gained through reports and drill-downs, so try to be selective with the widgets you put on your dash.

From here, it is simply a matter of selecting the correct data and filters.

For measuring how many people came to the site, Unique Visitors is the most accurate statistic for an SEO consultant. We can add this under metrics very simply.

Click Save and presto! The Unique Visitors widget appears on your new dash.

The New Visitors widget can be added just as easily from the Metrics area. What gets a little trickier is trying to show two metrics together. For example, if we want to know which search terms most new visitors arrived by. We can do this by creating a Table widget.

As you can see, we have selected Search Term as our Dimension and New Visits as our Metric. You can also add a second Metric if you would like to compare results.

You could also display this as a Pie Chart, particularly if simplicity and readability is valued over detail for that particular user.

Filters can be added to narrow down the data and make it even more valuable for that user – for example, if this SEO agent was purely focused on Australian traffic, a filter could be used to only show Australian numbers.

There are hundreds of combinations possible through different metrics, dimensions and filters and it’s worth taking some time out to just try out a few and see which provide the most relevant information for the dashboard user. You can then simply drag and drop the widgets to arrange them in the best order, usually in order of Overview > Details > Goals/Outcomes.

The key to designing a good dashboard is a balance between relevancy and simplicity; create the specific widgets you need, and nothing more.

Try creating your own dashboard today. In fact, try making several based on different objectives.

Understanding these key reports will help you make heads and tails of your Analytics data, and give you the tools to make changes and optimisations.

Audience Overview

Understanding who is visiting your site and how they are accessing it is crucial to knowing how to market to them. The Audience reports provide useful data on:

• The demographic of your audience such as the country or city they are in.
• The way they access your site such as desktop or mobile, browser type and screen size.
• How they behave on your website – length of time on site, number of pageviews or how many press the back button and leave the site.
• Whether they are a new customer or a returning customer.

These metrics allow you to understand who your online customer is.

Consider that if you have a high number of visitors accessing your website on a mobile device…is your website design mobile friendly?

Traffic Sources Overview

Did you know that not all traffic is created equal? There are certain types of traffic and visitors that are worth far more than others, and simply counting pageviews is not enough to measure success. The Traffic sources report provides more specific information such as:

• An overview on whether your visitors have arrived on your website from a search engine, directly or referred through another website. Eg. Yellow pages
• What keyword visitors search for on a search engine to find your website. Every business should understand their keywords.
• What search engine people used to find your site.
• Any Paid advertising traffic from your Google AdWords campaigns.

The traffic sources report is very important in understanding where your visitors are coming from and where you should be focusing your marketing efforts.

Consider that if your website was receiving more traffic from Facebook than Twitter and you had more followers on Twitter….then perhaps you should be focusing more attention on Facebook or improving your content on Twitter.

Adwords Report

Getting to the Adwords information takes a little more navigating. You can get an overview of your campaign by drilling down to the Campaign section:

If you’re spending any sort of money on an AdWords campaign, it’s essential to monitor what happens after you’ve secured a user’s click. The Adwords report allows you to make the following insights:

• Which campaigns are yielding the best conversions and revenue?
• Which keywords are most effective and at what times of day?
• Are the landing pages the best match for each ad, or are people exiting your website quite quickly due to lack of relevance?

AdWords and Analytics go hand in hand, and a symbiotic relationship between the two is the best way to get value for money.

Conversions Overview

An easy way to think of conversions is the success rate of your site. Whatever your goals are – signing up to a newsletter, making an enquiry or buying an eBook, for example – Google Analytics can measure them and present data on your successes and areas for improvement. There are two main conversion types:

• Goal conversions measure the set business goals you create through setting a goal page, action or event.
• Ecommerce conversions measure your on-site sales from your shopping cart or other sales site.

Measuring conversions allows you to track the tangible successes of you website, and you can attach monetary values to them to prove worth and value to the business.

Consider this:

If your sales team convert 10% of all website enquiries and your average sales value = $500, you can assign a value of $50 (10% of $500) to every enquiry. This provides a tangible value to each enquiry. You should monitor these figures closely and update on a regular basis.

Measuring goal completions helps you track Return on Investment (ROI) of your online marketing efforts.

Content Overview

Above all else, top quality content is essential to a website, and it’s just as important to ensure it is being presented and marketed in the correct way. The Content report shows you:

• How frequently each page was viewed and which were most popular.
• Which landing pages had the highest and lowest bounce rates.
• Site Search reports shows search terms people used if you have a search facility on your website.
• Event reports track how users interacted with Flash or other interactive elements.

Monitoring information like this allows you to refine and restructure your content strategy, and is particularly useful if you run a blog and want to know which topics are getting the most interest.

Of course, each of these reports has deeper options and more complex facilities to allow you to truly mine for data, but even these straightforward functions give you excellent insight into the workings of your site and what you can do to optimise it.

In Summary

Google Analytics provides a wealth of data and you should use it to extract the points that you feel could do with some improvement or that would help you modify your website to improve your conversion rates.

You should track certain data sets and see how much progress you make and determine what works and what doesn’t.

Understanding where your visitors are coming from and what keywords they are using should be an important measurement.

Google Analytics contains a large volume of data and it can be a case of information overload for the typical beginner. This article contains some useful tips and information to get you started.

Useful Metrics To Know About Your Website

There are several basic metrics to measure on your site:

• Visits. The total number of times your site was visitedin a given period. You can also compare to a previous period to help identify changes.
• Page views. The total number of pages visited on average by each visitor. This can be broken down further so you can see which pages were most popular. A high number of pageviews can help confirm that people are interested in your site as they are interacting with it.
• Time on site. Helps measure the length of time people stay on your website.
• Bounce rate. When someone clicks onto your site then immediately hits back on their browser, that’s a “bounce.” High bounce rates mean your landing page may not be appealing or relevant to what your customer was hoping to find..
• Keywords:. Help you identify the search terms people are using in Google to find your website. If a keyword is receiving a high “bounce rate”, you should review the content of this page to see how you can improve it.

Setting Good Business Goals

One of the most useful features of Google Analytics is being able to set tangible goals on your site. A goal on Analytics is simply something you are trying to achieve from your visitor. This may be a conversion measurement, such as completing an enquiry form, buying your product or signing up to a blog. It could also be achieving a number of visitors to your website in a month or an average number of pageviews.. These goals will be recorded for the number of times they’re achieved, and you can set either a numeric or monetary value to start measuring the true effectiveness of your website.

Improving Conversions

When your website translates into real business revenue, it’s called a “conversion”. The purpose of any commercial website is to increase the rate of these conversions, and the statistics provided by Analytics can help you do the following:

• Identify strong points and weak points in your conversion process. “Funnels” are graphics that display how many visitors get to a certain page (eg, the confirmation of an order), and how they got there. It also shows where they’re abandoning the process, giving you a solid starting point to reassess your site design.
• Figure out which of your landing pages are providing the most conversions, and optimise and focus further traffic on them with SEO and advertising techniques.
• Develop your conversion pages and techniques. Google Analytics data is constantly flowing in, so it’s possible to observe how changes affect your conversion rates. Using the data provided, make alterations to the parts that are turning people off and keep track of the difference this makes.
• Create custom reports. Keep all the most important numbers in one easy place.
• Refine your strategy. If you’re finding a lot of traffic is heading to pages you weren’t expecting, or is coming from keywords you weren’t necessarily targeting, it may be time to readjust your focus. Likewise, if your conversions are simply too low, a complete overhaul of your online strategy may be needed to get you back on track.

The most important information that Google Analytics gives you is where your website is going wrong, and where your site is going right. In a series of future blog posts, we will be looking at the different key metrics the service provides, and explaining what they mean for your website and business.

However when you do update, it’s important to do so correctly. When updating the WordPress CMS software itself, always make a back up of your entire website. It’s possible for things to go wrong, and if you don’t have a way to restore your old site it can be a nightmare to fix. Follow the official instructions carefully if you need to make a manual update, however with certain builds or hosts you will be able to update automatically.  

Plugin updates are almost always automatic (however you need to manually check for and instigate them), however it’s still a good idea to be cautious. Update one at a time and thoroughly check to make sure nothing has broken before moving onto the next. It’s difficult to trouble shoot if you make more than one change before checking.

It can also be a good idea to do a quick search into the plugin name and version that you will be updating to – sometimes there’s a bug or issue that developers don’t catch and it will usually be all over various tech help forums if it’s a widespread issue. Sometimes it’s better to hold off and wait for the next update if the problem is really major.

Plugin updates aren’t released on any particular schedule, as it’s up to each individual developer to create and release them. Check regularly to see if any updates have come out is best practice, but at the very least, scheduling a day every 6-12 months to routinely go through and make any updates is essential. If you don’t, you risk exposing your site to serious security threats as well as missing out on improved functionality and features.

Going beyond the basic functions, there are a number of ways you can maximise Google Drive’s excellent functionality. Here are a few tips to get you started:

1. Create Forms. One of the lesser used file formats in Google Drive is the form – these are customisable surveys that can be shared by sending a direct link or via email. You can construct a form using multiple choice, checkboxes, text boxes, scales and grids to get the exact feedback you want. Once filled in, Google Drive automatically compiles the data into a spreadsheet, making it one of the most efficient ways to conduct market research or gather opinions.

2. Attach to Email. Google’s products are designed to work together seamlessly, which is why it’s so easy to attach files from your Google Drive to your Gmail. When composing, simply click Insert Files Using Drive next to the Add Attachment symbol. Cutting down the number of steps needed to save, browse for and reattach files is a huge plus to using the Google suite, and because you send a download link rather than an actual copy of the file, there is no size limit. This makes it great for sending video or other large files.

3. Download To Computer. Although you can use Google Drive purely as a cloud-based storage system, downloading it will create a physical folder on your harddrive that is directly linked to the Drive, allowing you to add, grab, edit and navigate items inside it just like a regular folder. You can also pin it to the task bar by dragging it to the Windows Explorer icon.

4. Recover Files. Google Drive keeps a revision log of all the changes you make to a file – for up to 30 days. This can be a real life saver if a file accidentally gets over-written, and you can even restore deleted files within this time period. Open a file on the browser version Google Drive and hit Ctrl + Alt + G to view the revision history and restore from a chosen point in time. You can also mark certain versions to never be automatically deleted, giving you a secure fallback.

These extra features and tricks add value to Google Drive as a business tool, providing more features and efficiency.

RSS is great for both authors and readers. For readers, it makes it easy to follow multiple blogs or websites and keep up with updates without checking a dozen different sites every day. For authors, it makes your content that much more accessible and encourages the audience to continue interacting with what you make on a regular basis. However despite its exceptional functionality, RSS is not as widely used as you might expect. Many users have simply never heard of it, or aren’t rabid enough blog consumers to see it as necessary.

This lack of mainstream usage has caused one of the biggest and most popular readers, the Google Reader, to be closed down. Google cites a desire to conserve energy and resources for larger projects as the reason, but it has been a bitter pill to swallow for the many who used it as their preferred RSS reader. Google has given ample notice in order for users to extract their feed data from it so they don’t lose all their subscriptions – but then what?

Top Google Reader Replacements

Immediately following news of the closure, smaller RSS Feed applications and providers seized their chance to get a look in on a market that had been previously dominated by the search tool. For those despairing of the loss of Google Reader or looking to get started with RSS, the following options have emerged into the spotlight:

The Old Reader – Does exactly what it claims in the name – faithfully emulates the Google Reader experience as closely as possible. Import all your old feeds and be greeted by an extremely familiar interface. However there is currently no mobile version available.

Feedly – Even before the closure of Google Reader, Feedly was popular for its efficiency, quality search algorithm and social media integration, allowing you to share your favourite new updates with your social circles. Mobile version available.

With these options available the blow of losing Google Reader is felt much less, allowing a new generation of content consumers to get on board with this useful tool.

Markup describes the coding language used to tell a browser how it should load a particular page – for most websites this is a combination of HTML and CSS. Similarly, microdata tells search engines about that website so that they can understand its contents for the purpose of creating search results. Though there are several existing markup formats that do this, Schema has selected an entirely new one to ensure consistency across all the search engines and to make it clearer for designers as to which they should employ. The syntax is fairly straightforward, and it is a small investment that will add a lot of value to your website.

The reason microdata and Schema are so important can be seen when you search for something as simple as a film title. A listing for website without microdata will simply show up as a standard link and description, while a listing for a website with microdata can be used to show detailed information such as onsite ratings, dates, related links and much more right from the search results page. This additional information is called a “Rich Snippet” and gives searchers a much deeper insight into your website, and allows you to emphasise the important information.

Naturally this makes the link stand out and become a very attractive click for viewers. The Google team also haven’t directly ruled out that simply adding Schema to your site may boost rankings in itself.

Schemas are extremely diverse, and whatever the focus of your website there will be additional information you can add such as:

• Names, genders and biographical details for people
• Location, opening hours and access for physical locations
• Reviews for services and restaurants
• Offers and products for eCommerce sites

To add Schema to your site, you can either go straight to the source at Schema.org to learn about the different codes and applications for yourself, or if you’re using a CMS such as WordPress you can try out a suitable Schema plugin.

If you haven’t looked into adding Schema to your site, now is the time to get familiar and think about getting on board with this trend that is set to add a lot of additional value to your hard-earned SEO results.

1. Match the theme and tone. Depending on who your blog is aimed at, consider whether your theme should be chic and modern or more traditional and familiar. Many literary blogs go for simple, clean layouts that emphasise type and words, whereas cooking and homemaking blogs tend to have warmer, friendlier designed with lots of images and colours. Design Is Mine is a great example of proving the authority of the blog with a slick design.
2. Make it easy to find content. Tagging your posts and providing a page with links to browse different tags is an excellent way to make older posts more accessible. WordPress and Blogger hosted blogs allow you to create extra pages, where you can manually link to older posts under sections or categories. A search bar is a simple addition that will give your post archives a new lease on life. The Fat Free Vegan uses categories to help readers find the recipe they’re looking for.
3. Clear navigation. Use straightforward menus to guide users to where they want to go. Find the most popular topics and sections of your blog and give them a beeline to them. The best navigation has as few categories as possible. Popular exercise blog Blogilates keeps all their posts organised by categories and menus from the very front page.
4. Maximise social sharing and subscriptions. A slew of social media buttons for all the major networks can be easily added to any blog, and will appear on each individual post for maximum sharing potential. Similarly, RSS and e-mail subscription options will make it easier for people to follow your blog and share new posts with others as they go live. The SEOmoz Blog has examples of both.
5. Utilise extra pages. Most blogging services allow you to add pages of static content in addition to your blog feed. Use these to organise content, add information about yourself and your blog, to link and receive reciprocal links, or simply add content that you find doesn’t need to be updated much. StoneSoup uses these to advertise their books and other print media to increase their blog revenue.

A well-designed blog will make your content more attractive and shareable. Consider the tone and theme of your posts, and above all make sure it is easy to navigate both old and new posts.

1. Write powerful copy. The text on your product pages should do all the work of a salesman, offering solid reasons to buy the item. It should be friendly and highly readable, with information broken into lists and headers wherever possible. The text on your main and landing pages should be focused and easy to skim – most online shoppers will give your website a brief visual assessment before deciding to look any further.
2. Display superb imagery. If your product photographs look stunning, then it will make your product so much more compelling. The DIY photography approach is hard to get a top result, so seriously think of sourcing a professional photographer that has an impressive portfolio.
3. Provide exceptional customer service. It’s easy to be misled into thinking that online sales aren’t from “real people” when they only show up as numbers on your computer, but your customers deserve just as much care and service as their physical counterparts would. Reply to all enquiry emails promptly and with a friendly, human response. For optimal results, try to talk to people on the phone. Quickly resolve any issues and provide updates if dispatch or shipping is delayed.
4. Put the customer experience first. Just like a store in a mall, you want to design your website with the customer and their thought pattern in mind. Think about who your customers are and what they’re immediately looking for. Show them ways to directly achieve their shopping goals. Create a website that’s professional and aesthetically pleasing, that makes them feel like they’ve come to the right place.
5. Think online marketing. Your eCommerce success is dependent on how well you market your website. Having a great online marketing strategy will make the difference between success and mediocrity. Consider SEO, advertising, social media and viral marketing techniques.
6. Review and improve. It’s important for you to be in touch with your site and monitor what works and what doesn’t. Keep an eye on statistics provided by services like Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools to find out where people may be losing interest, or where they disengage with the sales process. Make changes and experiment, optimising towards the more popular items and pages.

For those familiar with traditional retail, some aspects of the eCommerce strategy will come more easily. Successfully blending solid real-world marketing fundamentals and new online marketing techniques will help drive a high-performing website.

Not exactly. Counting page views is highly misleading because really you have no way of knowing whether those page views came from a hundred people clicking ten pages each or a thousand people clicking one page each. Even if you could tell the difference, which would be better for your site? Fortunately, Google Analytics provides you with more solid numbers that help you not only determine your real traffic count but the quality of that traffic too. These statistics are represented as Unique Visitors, Return Visitors and New Visitors.

The main way Analytics assesses traffic is through the count of Unique Visitors. Each time someone visits your website, a cookie is stored in their browser that marks their use of the site as a single event, not multiple page views. This cookie lasts for two years, meaning any visits from that person during that time are not measured as unique. A second cookie is used to measure individual visits from the user, and this one expires every 30 minutes. It also measures how long they stayed on the site, giving you a good idea as to whether or not your website is engaging.

Although doing things this way will produce a lower number than if you were to just measure page views, the data is far more accurate and practical. If that visitor returns within the two years of the cookie, they will count as a Return Visitor, whereas when they arrive at your site for the first time, they will be counted as a New Visitor. This way you learn about the real, human users of your website, and the data teaches you about the true usage patterns of your site. Of course, counting page views is still useful as it gives you insight into how long users are staying engaged with your website for, and whether the initial foot traffic is converting to interest and sales.

There are also some shortfalls with the cookies method – some users will have cookies turned off, and if they use two browsers then it will count as two separate visitors. By and large however, these are just the natural fluctuations you can expect with any data gathering. Overall, it is important to regularly review your site traffic totals to develop a more realistic picture of how well your website is performing.