Analytics Expert

Initial Screen

Understanding the Google Analytics interface will help you find and analyze information more effectively. When you first login to your Google Analytics account, you’ll see a screen similar to the one on the slide. In this example, the user has access to three Google Analytics accounts. Click on the name of the account you would like to access.

Analytics Settings

This takes you to the account-specific page where you manage the set-up and configuration of your account and profiles. You can toggle to your other Analytics accounts using the drop-down menu at the top right of the page. Each profile for the selected account is displayed under “Website Profiles”. From this screen you can access reports for each profile. You an also edit configuration settings, add filters, add or change user permissions, and add or remove profiles altogether.

Report Interface

Click the “View Reports” link for a profile, and you’ll be taken to the dashboard for that profile. A sample dashboard is shown on the slide. We’ve called out the user interface features that are available on all reports. Your report navigation, scheduled email settings, Help links, data export options, and the calendar. Note that there are several places to find help information. The Help link on the top right of the page takes you to the Google Analytics Help Center. Also, on the left margin of the page, you’ll see a Help Resources box with links.

Dashboard

The dashboard is where you put all the summary information about your site that you want to see at a glance. To add a report to the dashboard, just go to the report you want to add and then click Add to Dashboard. On the dashboard itself, you can position the report summaries however you like and delete the ones you don’t need.

Report Structure

In the left hand navigation, you’ll see that your reports are organized into categories: Visitors, Traffic Sources, Content, Goals, and Ecommerce. If you don’t have an ecommerce site or don’t have ecommerce reporting enabled, you won’t see the ecommerce section in your navigation. To view reports, click on any of the categories and the reports available within that category will appear. Some reports contain additional sub-reports, like the AdWords report under Traffic Sources. Click the arrow to see the sub-reports.

Setting the Active Date Range

To change your date range, click the arrow next to the active date range displayed at the upper right of all reports. You can then use the Calendar or the Timeline to select a new date range. The “Calendar” tab allows you to select date ranges by clicking on the day and month within the calendar or you can type dates in the “Date Range” boxes. The “Timeline” tab has a date slider that you can resize and move to cover any range of dates. You can see your site’s traffic trends in the Timeline.

Setting a Comparison Date Range

You can select a date range to compare to the current selected date range.
When using the Timeline to set a comparison date range, you’ll see two date sliders instead of just one. You can use a comparison date range to see how your site is performing month over month, year over year or even from one day to another. The date range and comparison date ranges you select will apply to all your reports and graphs.

Graphing by Day, Week and Month

Most reports include an over-time graph at the top. You can make this graph display data by day, week, or month.

Multi-Line Graphs

You can also compare two metrics on the same graph to see how they are correlated. Click the arrow in the top left of the graph. Then, click the Compare Two Metrics link and select which two metrics you want to compare. In this example, we’re graphing visitors versus average time on site.

Graph Roll-Overs

You can roll your mouse over the graph and see actual numbers.

Exporting Report Data

You can export data from any report. There are four formats: PDF, XML, CSV and tab-separated. Simply click on the Export button at the top of any report page and select the format you want.

Email Reports

Next to the Export button, you’ll see an Email button. Click it and you’ll see a screen with two tabs: Send Now, and Schedule. You can schedule reports to be delivered daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly. You also have the option to select what format to send them in, such as PDF or CSV. The email scheduling feature provides an easy way to automatically distribute specific report data to the people who need it.

Curriculum Links

The Overview reports in each section contain a set of Curriculum links. You can use these links to quickly find information that you need. In some cases, these links access reports that are not available from the left report navigation.

Title and Breadcrumbs

You can always see where you are in a report hierarchy by looking at the title and the breadcrumbs at the top of the report. Look at the example on the slide. From the title, you can see that you are in the Referring Link report and that you’re looking at traffic from the link blogger.com/home. From the breadcrumbs, you can see that you are in the Referring Sites report hierarchy. You can click on any of the breadcrumb links to go back to that report.

Narratives and Scoreboards

Nearly every report contains a short narrative that summarizes the traffic that’s included in the report. The scorecard below the narrative provides metric aggregates and averages for the traffic. Each box in the scorecard contains a question mark button. Clicking it opens a small window that explains how the metric is calculated.

Report Tabs

Most reports provide tabs that show different sets of data. The Site Usage tab shows metrics such as the number of pages viewed per visit, the average time on site, and the bounce rate. The Goal Conversion tab shows the conversion rates for each of your goals. If you’ve enabled ecommerce reporting on your Profile Settings page, you’ll also see an Ecommerce tab. This tab shows metrics such as Ecommerce revenue, number of transactions, and average value. The AdWords Campaigns reports have an additional tab called Clicks. This tab contains AdWords related metrics such as clicks, cost, revenue per click and ROI.

Quick Segmentation

You can segment table data in different ways using the Dimension pulldown menu. So, for example, if you want to see the traffic in your keywords report broken out by City, you just select City from the pulldown menu.

Keyword Reports

In the Keywords and Search Engines reports, you have the option to analyze just paid, just non-paid traffic, or all search traffic. Simply click on the links above the scorecard to make your selection.

Hourly Reporting

Some reports allow you to view results by hour. On these reports, you can select the view you want by clicking on the clock button in the top right corner next to “Graph By”.

Report Views

There are five different Views available in most reports. The first icon organizes your report data into a table. This is the default view for many reports.
The second icon allows you to create a pie-chart based on any one of the metrics in the report. The third icon shows a bar-graph based on any metric you select. The fourth icon is the comparison bar graph view. It allows you to quickly see whether each entry in the table is performing above or below average. The fifth icon allows you to instantly see a summary report with graphs for the traffic you’re analyzing.

Sorting Data

Columns within tables can be sorted in both ascending and descending order simply by clicking on the column heading. The arrows next to the heading title indicate the order in which the results are listed. A down arrow indicates descending order and an upward arrow indicates ascending order.

Expanding Number of Results Displayed

By default, all reports with tables display ten rows. To display more than ten rows, go to the bottom of your report and click the dropdown menu arrow next to “Show rows”. You can display up to 500 rows per page.

Find Box

You can use the Find box at the bottom left of your reports to narrow or refine your results. For example, if you are looking at the All Traffic Sources report and you want to only see traffic from the Google domain, you can type in Google and select “containing”. Or, to exclude all traffic from the Google domain, you would select “excluding”.

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