Speed, Focus, Smart Insights: 5 Google Analytics Custom Reports FTW!

SplitsStandard reports stink. Custom reports rock!

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you are quite familiar with this sentiment. I've expressed it often. :)

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The primary reason is simple: You are unique. Your business is unique. Why would a report created for everyone work for the special someone that you are?

There are other great reasons as well.

Custom reports allow you to deeply focus (by eliminating the rif-raf metrics and dimensions, they save time and show just what you want). When shared, custom reports allow you to deliver deeper relevance. Custom reports allow you to package up entire datasets for deeper analysis.

I've shared a whole bunch of custom reports in the past. You can download them into your Google Analytics account via one click (along with some lovely Advanced Segments and a Dashboard). Just go to the GA Solutions Gallery and click Import: Occam's Razor Awesomeness.

You can download a bunch more, that are not yet in the bundle above, by following the links at the end of this post. Seven more! The include single custom reports that replace all/most current standard reports in GA on Mobile, Content, Paid Search and Acquisition. Your life will be simpler. Grab the above, then grab the ones at the end of this post.

Today, I want to share a few of my recent favorites that solve day-to-day challenges in clever ways.

But, before we go there I want to share an important concept. Many custom reports are wrong because we mess up the fundamental data model in analytics. We mis-align metrics and dimensions across Users, Session, Hits. If you want to create accurate custom reports (or apply advanced segments), this post is mandatory reading: Excellent Analytics Tip #23: Align Hits, Sessions, Metrics, Dimensions!

With that life-lesson out of the way, here are the super-cool custom reports that truly unlock the power of Google Analytics…

If you use Adobe or IBM or… you'll find these concepts to be extremely relevant. They all allow you to create deeply custom reports, so just recreate them there. If your digital analytics tool does not allow you to create these types of reports, ditch it before it gets you fired!

In each of the above five amazing custom reports, you'll learn various techniques – how to create a flat report, how to use filters, how to create micro-ecosystems of data, just get cool visualizations you can in PowerPoint, etc. – and you'll have a link you can click on to download the report directly into your Google Analytics account.

Here we go….

1. Hostname [Domains with your GA code]

This report demonstrates the power of getting something out of Google Analytics that you might know exists there.

There are many metrics and dimensions in GA that are hidden because they are not in any standard report.

I suffer from the problem that tons of people scrape the content from this blog and repost it as if it were their own. Silly problem (and an ineffective strategy for the scrapers). I was worried that if they scrape the content from my blog, they likely scrape my GA code as well and now I have polluted data!

There is a simple way to understand the impact, create a custom report to draw out an otherwise hidden GA dimension: Hostname.

Here's my custom report…

hostname custom report google analytics

I wanted to capture how many sessions and users were being "added," I wanted to know their bounce rate (ha!), and some sense for how deep the engagement might be on their site (as I have set up some behavior goal-types on my GA account and also, hurray, assigned goal values!).

Here's the resulting output… a simple and effective report that caused me to step off the ledge…

hostname custom report data google analytics

So, yes, people are scraping content. It is not a big deal.

So the Sessions and Users numbers are tiny – completely ignorable. (This is why I think it is such a distraction to have Analysts wrap themselves into a pretzel and spend a ton of time and custom coding to "eliminate internal company traffic." Look, just grow the pie, just do better marketing. Make the internal traffic so small that you can ignore it!)

I'll admit it hurts a bit that their bounce rates are so much lower than mine. :)

On a serious note, some of these values are ok. For example, translate.googleusercontent.com shows users who are reading the blog via Google Translate and are likely non-English speakers. If this number is big, consider providing translations. Just check each source to see if you need to be worried. And, in my case even if the number are 10x more, I would not really worry in context of the 1.2 million overall Visits.

Custom Report Download: Just grab the Occam's Razor Awesomeness bundle, the report is in there.

Bonus: There's lots of goodness that is hidden in Google Analytics. Explore here: Dimensions & Metrics Explorer

2. Social Media Performance Analysis

This report demonstrates the power of custom reports to reduce the time you spent hunting and gathering.

Let's say you want to analyze your social media performance. At the moment you will have to go to the Acquisition folder, and at the very minimum look through all these reports to pick out the best bits…

google analytics acquisition reports

That's a lot of stuff, right? The All Traffic folder has Social spread out in Channels, Treemaps, Source/Medium and likely in Referrals. In the Social folder you've got lots of other stuff (which might be un-tied to All Traffic), that you likely need some time to internalize.

For most people, you don't need all this digging around. You can create one destination where you, and everyone in your company, can wallow in the trough that is social data!

I call reports like this one micro-ecosystems. It brings together everything you need in one place. (There's a Paid Search micro-ecosystem you can download at the end of this post.) We have three tabs of data. The first one gives you the overall end-to-end picture (Acquisition – Behavior – Outcomes). The second one will focus on analyzing content performance on our site from Social traffic. The third one will be on device analysis (because of our hypothesis that so much of Social consumption is mobile!).

Here's what the first tab, ABO, looks like in the configuration mode…

social media custom report definition

Always, always, always, no matter what you report, ensure you have acquisition, behavior and outcome metrics. You'll see all three above.

I want to know what Social Network people are coming from. I want to know Users (valiant imperfect effort at people!) and how often each User comes (acquisition metrics). How much content they are consuming (I use session duration only on rare occasions due to time imperfections) and do they get what they were looking for are go hunting (behavior metrics). Finally, what value was delivered to my business (even for a non-profit such as myself, an outcome metric).

To aid further discovery, I've created a drilldown for country to optimize my social participation.

Do notice the clever use of the filter (Social Source Referral Exact Yes) above. I want to give the Google Analytics team big love for this life saver. It was deeply frustrating to keep track of social networks (they come and go every day!). Now with Social Network dimension and Social Source Referral filter, you don't have to worry about it. Uncle Paul is keeping track of it on your behalf! Give him a hug next time you see him.

Here's the delightful report…

social media custom report ABO

I can easily see all the sources I would expect, and some I did not expect. Again, this is thanks to Uncle Paul's clever mappings. I can see that Pocket drives most repeat visits, and people are most curious (5% internal search rate). They are also delivering the highest Per Session Goal Value.

I've never expressed much engagement with Stack Exchange (or Quora), clearly a mistake I need to rectify.

It also confirms some truths I already knew, Twitter and LinkedIn. But I have stronger numbers for some metrics, but it is clear I can do more to increase the Per Session Goal Value. (I would do that by creating advanced segments for, say Quora and applying that to my Goals Overview report and comparing it with Twitter and LinkedIn.)

Before I go there, I can click on the network I'm most interested in and see where the traffic is coming from…

social media custom report ABO country

There are huge differences for me between Twitter and Facebook. Insights I will use to shift my participation on both channels.

Such a simple collection of metrics and dimensions, such lovely immediate insights.

The second tab is more fun. We always worry about our tweets and posts and reshares when it comes to Social. We don't analyze what people are interested on our site (mobile or desktop) enough. So, here's the tab configuration…

social media custom report content analysis

I've switched the dimensions so that I look at the Landing Page first, and then drill down to which Social Network is most effective. For metrics, I've chosen Unique Pageviews and Pageviews (remember pages are hit level metrics, don't pick Users and Sessions, they are session level dimensions). Then Page Load Time and Bounce Rates – interesting contrast, right? Finally for outcomes I've picked Page Value (remember, it is imprecise to measure session level metrics like conversion rate, goal completions, for hit level dimensions like pages).

Here's the gorgeous beast…

social media custom report content analysis data

First, look at the contrast between Page Load Time and Bounce Rate. Even accommodating for the fact that Page Load Time is sampled and could always be measured better, there is a lot of goodness here. Work for me to think about and my IT Team (one person 10% of the time!) to action.

The thing I'm most surprised about is the long tail of Social interest. I now write once a month, so much of the stuff above is old. This is a good reminder. Most Social strategies consist of spamming the fresh and moving from fresh to fresher to freshest. Forgetting the truth above. The value in monetizing the old (and still relevant and valuable).

It is also clear above that certain types of content delivers higher value outcomes for my little business here. That in turn will help me figure out what to amplify using social channels. Fewer Google Analytics posts, more broad marketing and business consulting posts! Goodness. I should stop writing this one. :)

Tactical and strategic insights. Lovely.

I can also then drill down specifically and optimize for each Social Network by clicking on any of the posts above…

social media custom report content analysis data detail

A new layer of insights.

It should not matter that my insights and guidance above are for a content site and you have an ecommerce website. On Social we create content (hopefully that informs, entertains, provides utility – my mantra for social success). You can use the same process, for your hardcore ecommerce money making venture, to identify actionable insights.

Lastly, remember the hypothesis that most Social consumption is mobile?

I have a tab called Device Analysis to help me dive deeper into people's behavior by device when it comes to Social, here are the ABO metrics…

social media custom report device analysis

Turns out that at least for me, the prevailing wisdom is not true. Yes, mobile, mobile, mobile and mobile. I hear you Gurus. But, my report does not bear that out. I need to ensure my social strategy is Desktop, Phone and then Tablet (I have to admit this small number was a big surprise).

This will influence the content I'll write (length, type, images, etc.), and it will influence the promotion I might do using advertising options (for example, as Edgerank chokes all of us, I buy ads on Facebook to share my content, above data helps me target that better).

My Device Analysis report has a built in drilldown. Just pick the platform, click. Here's the report for Mobile…

social media custom report device analysis detail

It was really fascinating to see the goal completions and conversion rates for Apple vs. Samsung. They did not go with what the prevailing wisdom was. If I were a real business I would use these insights in my ad-targeting strategies. But, I'm too poor (other than FB above), so this report is just for demonstration purposes for me. You can, and should use it though as a part of your Social Media Marketing strategy.

Custom Report Download: Log into your GA account, click: AK: Social Media Performance Analysis Report

Bonus: The very best use of custom reports is when you apply relevant advanced segments to them. This is how you find really rich insights. For example, I found it extremely useful to look at the broad cluster of Social Traffic and contrast it with Users that became Loyal to the website…

social media custom report advanced segments

A much smaller number than you might expect, but these are golden people to me, a part of the avinash army of analysis ninjas! I learn from what works for them, and try to get more of them.

I would not get to this if I did not use advanced segmentation.

3. Business Outcomes Analysis

This report demonstrates the new amazing metrics in Google Analytics, thanks to Enhanced Ecommerce, and the new wonderful ability you have to understand the business outcomes delivered from all those cookies/visitors/users.

All you people (like me) with non-ecommerce websites, hang in there. See the second tab below, that's for you. We'll come back to it. Patience padawan!

I don't like having more than six or so metrics (as you've seen above, and will below). Humans and only take so much in at one time. But in this case, more to demonstrate the power, I'm going to go a bit overboard.

For my ecommerce business, I've chosen my acquisition, behavior and outcome metrics…

google analytics business outcomes analysis ecommerce

We start with Users. So far so good. Deep breath.

The first new metric is Buy-to-Detail Rate, it measures the number of products purchased per number of product-detail views. I love this, and think of it as an efficiency metric. (Do you know what % of Sessions contained a Product Detail page view?) Product Adds to Cart and Product Checkouts are just what they imply. Clever new behavior metrics.

Ecommerce Conversion Rate, Transactions, Average Order Value and Revenue are buddies you already know so well.

I worry that Analysts are way too locked into Adobe or Google Analytics' monthly view and rarely look at longer term performance. Partly because the graph on top only looks at one metric (and that too over 30 days unless you change it, dang!).

Hence, the dimension I've chosen to look at is Month of Year. I want to compare my key metrics over time. I'm also using a new dimensions not enough people are using, Traffic Type, and of course finally, our long-time lover, Source/Medium…

google analytics business outcomes analysis ecommerce dimensions

My resulting report is so sexy, :), that I have to break it into two pieces to show you clearly in the limited pixels I have available here. You'll see it all as one report when you download it below.

Here are my acquisition and behavior metrics. It would be super convenient if the team at Google would be so sweet as to actually say June-15, July-15, Aug-15, but we push on regardless. You can see the three months and the trend of the various key metrics…

google analytics business outcomes analysis ecommerce data1

Aug-15 is partial above, so that explains the low number. But, June is unusual. While we got lots of traffic in July, it was clearly irrelevant to the ecommerce business because the Buy-to-Detail ratio was significantly lower.

The other signal is the June's much traffic also had higher Add To Cart and Checkouts.

Is grabbing as much traffic as you can all it's cracked up to be? Maybe not.

Here's the other half of the report (because I love you so much, I've added the Month dimension here manually)…

google analytics business outcomes analysis ecommerce data2

You can see the other end of the story here. So far in Aug we are either trending with the June numbers or doing better. Bodes well for this month. But, really calls into question what the heck were we doing in July!

It is rare that we look at all key metrics trended like this over time. Hence, I love the above report.

I can choose a month, July since I'm so curious now, and I can drill down to Traffic Type…

google analytics business outcomes analysis ecommerce traffic type

You can see the key metrics trended for each channel. You can clearly see the important patterns above (what the heck is going on with Paid Search and Display!).

The big difference for me was Referral, in contrast to the other month. And, now I have the capacity to drill down and look at the Source/Mediums for that Traffic Type…

google analytics business outcomes analysis ecommerce source medium

YouTube… I'm going to kill you! What the heck man! Why are you not selling stuff for me!!! Reddit, you're up next.

(All kidding aside, YouTube is a See-Think channel, it is supposed to be bad at Do. More: See-Think-Do-Care business framework.)

I can compare and contrast and it took me only a very short amount of time to discover what was going on in July, and now I can fix it.

I want you to try and imagine how long looking through three levels of drilldowns across eight metrics and three months of data would take in standard Google Analytics report. Wait. That's a waste of time. Download the above report instead.

Custom Report Download: Log into your GA account, click: AK: Business Outcomes Analysis

I'd promised to share a non-ecommerce version of the above report. And, here it is…

google analytics business outcomes analysis non-ecommerce

I've simply added a second tab to the ecommerce report.

I can't use the same metrics, but I've kept the spirit alive in choosing my metrics as Users, Goal Conversion Rate, Goal Completions, Goal Value and Per Session Goal Value.

I dare you to be more obsessive about outcomes!

I've kept the dimensions exactly the same, because I'm recommending the same type of analysis as the above ecommerce version.

Here's my beautiful report…

google analytics business outcomes analysis non-ecommerce-data

To make the non-ecommerce tab work you'll need two things. 1. You'll need to have identified goals for you site. (And if you have not, really, what are you doing on the Internet?) 2. You'll need to have identified the economic values for those goals.

If you do, your report will be just as beautiful as mine above. And, you can do the same analysis that our e-com brethren are doing above. Including the relevant drill-downs to Traffic Type and Source/Medium…

google analytics business outcomes analysis non-ecommerce-data-referral

It is really, really cool that while serving the world with our content, we can also ensure that long term survival of our digital adventure.

Custom Report Download: Log into your GA account, click: AK: Business Outcomes Analysis

4. Campaign Cost Analysis

This report demonstrates something that will most likely won't work for you, but something I desperately want you to care about if you want your business to really win. The reason your boss is not more in love with digital, dare I say, is what this report is demanding you do.

We usually measure the outcome of our web strategy using things like conversion rates and revenue. We just did that above!

But, that is just sales. What about getting closer to measuring profit? Or, at least revenue net of marketing or acquisition costs?

You'll agree with me that that makes a lot of sense, right?

Yet, we rarely do it.

The problem is not the capability in the web analytics tools we have. The problem is our willingness to just do it.

Let's establish that cost is important.

Here's my custom report that helps my clients understand the truly end-to-end view of performance of their digital marketing campaigns…

campaign cost analysis custom report setup ecom

Except for the first one, I suspect you know the other metrics quite well. The first one is the one I'm most interested in.

The dimensions are Source/Medium, then we drill down to Campaign, and then by Device Category (as there are massive differences in performance once you get to Mobile and Tablets).

Here's how the report looks like when you have all the data flowing in as it should…

campaign cost analysis custom report ecommerce

You can see how much money you spent, how often you showed up on the advertising channel, how many people ended up on your site, resulting in what number of sessions (Clicks and Sessions never tie, if they are close, just move on). Then you get to the interesting bits, focus on performance (Click-Through Rate), Cost-Per-Click, and Per Session Value.

The contrast between the last two are particularly important.

If you are paying $1.33 per visit to your site, is the value of $1.66 sufficient to deliver a net positive outcome? Especially, after accounting for your salary?

I kid a bit of course, but this is a deadly serious matter.

Most of the time, we don't think about this carefully enough.

Notice the red arrow above. We only have cost data for 4.35% of the sessions. This is really poor because, in this case, over 35% of our traffic comes from Paid efforts (Email, Display, Social, Affiliates, etc.).

We can only answer smart questions about one: Paid Search.

This is shameful.

You can import cost data for all your Paid efforts into Google Analytics. For Email.For a billboard if you have cleverly added a url there. For Display. For Social. See an actual example of how to import non-Google ad data into GA.

Please invest the time in doing this. Your boss is going to love you infinitely more (because they will make decisions an order of magnitude smarter).

Custom Report Download: Log into your GA account, click: AK: All Campaigns: Cost Analysis: Ecom

I've also created a slightly tighter version of this report for non-ecommerce websites, because cost is important to all of us. As I'd mentioned above, I run some ads on Facebook to get FB to show my posts to more people who like my brand page on Facebook.

Here's the report configuration…

campaign cost analysis custom report setup non-ecom

Just a bit more focused on the metrics side, with the same dimensions and drilldowns.

Here's the report from a non-ecommerce blog, who uses email marketing to stay in close contact with it's Think and Care audience clusters…

campaign cost analysis custom report non ecom

The cost data for the email campaigns was uploaded into Google Analytics, and you can easily see how the end-to-end picture helps us understand the complete value that email marketing provides. Look at that CPC! Sweet.

You can get this type of data for all your campaigns, and I urge you to invest in that.

Custom Report Download: Log into your GA account, click: AK: All Campaigns: Cost Analysis: Non-Ecom

#5 Key Metrics: Map Overlay Visualization

This last report demonstrates using custom reports for purposes it was not really created for, creating a nice visualization.

I present a lot, internally and externally. Hence, my objective is to try and simplify the data presentation as much as I can. In aid of that goal, one strategy I use is to pull out the Map Overlay view in Google Analytics to show the data.

What do you think of this…

key metrics map overlay dashboard

There is such little space in this blog to see four different sets of data well. Yet, I bet you can see lots of interesting trends and patterns above. Pick the same states (dark ones or your fav state…) and look across. Interesting, right?

Here's the most obvious one. Traffic is so lop sided (California and Texas), and yet Per Session Value and Avg. Session Duration is so much more diverse! Are we simply getting sub-optimal traffic from California? And, why not more from Nevada? And, what is going on in the middle of the country in terms of time spent? What is up with that square state, and why don't they spend more money with us when they do spend time?

Really nice. And, no numbers.

Clearly, this is more for presentation (after you've already done the analysis, and have some of the answer above). But, in front of a group of people, your boss, perhaps it is all you need to move focus away from data and to shift it to having a discussion.

I snagged the four pictures above from a simple custom report I'd created for this purpose…

map overlay custom reports

I've used the Explorer report type in all reports above, in this case I've used the Map Overlay.

I've set the Zoom Level to Country, and set it as the United States. You can change both to your needs (World, Continent, Sub-Continent, Country).

I've further set the dimension to Region. Again, you can set it to your needs (Region, City, Metro).

This report is here so that you'll make your own clever use of the Map Overlay, but also to inspire you to take away the data as much as you can when you are done with your analysis. Your job is to not impress people with your data, you job is to drive the discussion forward about what to do and what the business impact will be from those actions.

Custom Report Download: Log into your GA account, click: AK: KPIs: Map Overlay Visualization

Bonus: Speaking of data visualization, more inspiration for you:

So there you go, five new custom reports (six actually) that I hope will bring a new layer of insights to your company, while speeding up the time it takes to get to those insights.

Custom reports are a powerful tool in your arsenal, I hope you completely ditch the standard reports and build your Analysis Ninja-dom on these micro-ecosystems.

As always, it is your turn now.

Do you have your favourite custom reports? The ones you can't live without? If so, would you please be so kind as to share links to them below so that we can all benefit? What changes would you make to any of my five custom reports above to make them even more effective? What can I take away? What can I add? Is there a clever strategy you use that I have not?

Please share your custom reports, your suggestions, your critique and your lessons from the front-lines via comments below.

Thank you.

PS: As promised, here are seven more custom reports I'd shared earlier on this blog…

Download the Page Efficiency Analysis V2, Visitor Acquisition Efficiency Analysis, and Paid Search Performance Analysis reports here: 3 Awesome, Downloadable, Custom Web Analytics Reports

Download the Paid vs. Organic Search Performance, PPC Keyword/Matched Query, End-to-End Paid Search reports here: Google Analytics Custom Reports: Paid Search Campaigns Analysis

Download the Content Efficiency & Keyword Drilldown Ecommerce report here: Produce Actionable Insights: Mate Custom Reports With Adv Segments!

Comments

  1. 1
    Matthew Browning says

    Just when I thought I'm using the full power of custom reporting, you write a post and make me realize I have more work to do.

    The campaign cost report is a good kick in the rear-end as we are not focused on that in my company. We are guilty of not going through the required pain to get the big benefits. I'm going to make a case at our next staff meeting to get email and display data in there.

    Thank you.

  2. 2
    David Portney says

    Hi Avinash,

    Thanks much for another insightful and moreover useful guide to effective use of GA custom reports in various business-types.

    Your comment "We mis-align metrics and dimensions across Users, Session, Hits" touches on my constant fear of doing exactly that (custom GA reports are my longtime BFF) – although I've read your post on that as well as Justin Cutroni's several times each and I'm far from a GA novice, I still fear I will mis-align and cause a domino-effect of sub-optimal non-awesomeness (to put it nicely).

    So then, Dear Avinash, is there some "method" or "shortcut" or "way of thinking/remembering" so I / we / we all can easily make sure we don't fall into the mis-alignment trap? Or better-asked, could you kindly please provide that here as a reply? – bonus points if it's an easily-remembered phrase that rhymes! ;-)

    Much appreciation!

    • 3

      David: I don't know of a clear guide, I know that is not what you want to hear. But think about this…

      You measure Users by their attributes, Sessions by inputs and outputs from the entire visit, Hits are the activity inside the visit.

      Usually, if something happens multiple times during a visit (pages viewed, videos watched, page value – which is assigned to all pages -, time on page etc.) then it is a hit-level metric or dimension. If something happens once during the visit (a source you come from, conversion rate, session value, keyword), it is a session-level metric or dimension.

      Avinash.

  3. 5

    Eye opening, as usual, Avinash.

    I'm not doing ecommerce yet, but the scraping report was a great tip.

    I've been using Google Alerts to find people who scrape my content and don't even bother changing it. I hadn't considered using Google Analytics to find the ones who steal the entire HTML and don't bother to change my GA code.

  4. 6

    Hi Avinash,

    Your blog posts are always incredible! Thank you so much for those!

    Quick question on the Advanced Segment that caught my attention here. Can you share or link to the place where you explain how you create a "Loyal Visitors" segment? What is the logic behind this group?

    Appreciate your feedback!

    • 7

      Olga: Loyalty can be defined in different ways. In the specific case above we were measuring multiple visits by the same person and capturing that using events and then using that as a goal

      In other cases, I've defined loyalty using the Duration and Pages goal types in GA.

      I'm waiting for the GA team to shift to allowing us true User Tracking by default, that would give us the best Loyalty measurement.

      Avinash.

  5. 8
    Sameer Pawar says

    Dear avinash,
    I am spellbounded with this marvellous blog.

    This blog is only resource i have to keep myself abreast with analytics practices and overall decorum.

    I have just finished your second book (web analytics 2.0) and have big regret that why didnt i bought it long back.
    Expecting your third book on universal analytics soon and I will make sure to be early buyer for the same.

    Here few questions:

    1. I want to practice on ecommerce enviroment and presenly there is no feeble hope as all of my projects are lead generation type. Do you know any sandboxing (Sample data with sample ecommerce environment.) That will help millions of new aspirant like me. May be I am sounding stupid as analytics is all about real time environment and real time world.

    2. I wish you can compile whole new book out of blog posts you made and people like me doesnt know correct sequence and biblical context. Rand fishkin published similar book and we all loved that. This is suggestion as I desperately needed this as you can publish such book in very less time. Also will love to have separate list of external usefull citations/tools/urls you mention time to time in your blog post.

    Do well and be well

    Sameer Pawar

    Eleventh Direction

    • 9

      Sameer: Thanks for the questions.

      1. I'm afraid I don't know. Though remember, you can set up Lead Gen sites as an Ecommerce type outcome and get all the reports desired. At the minimum, set up goals for your Lead Gen site and you can get commercy type metrics like goal values, all the MCF reports with attribution etc.

      2. I'm a year behind schedule in publishing a new book. I hope to find time to do so in the near future. I really do want to!

      Avinash.

  6. 10

    In the hostname report…. aren't the examples shown all GA spam, not legitimate sites that would have scraped your content?

  7. 12
    David Portney says

    Hi again Avinash,

    2 questions in 1 post? = a new record for me. Instead of grabbing the reports, I worked to recreate them with your lovely (thanks for providing) screenshots and ran into a problem I wonder if you can shed light upon:

    In recreating your "AK: Social Media Performance Analysis", the filter dimension "social source referral" and the report dimension "social source of referral" are not available choices! So, then I grabbed that report and looked under the hood and behold! – they are there in the report. Back to my reproduction of the report – no dice, they are not available choices.

    Whispers in my ear are that you have access to metrics/dimisions as the GA Evangelist that a mere evangelist such as myself do not? – but seriously, can you shed light upon this odd circumstance?

    Thanks!

  8. 13
    David Portney says

    PS: oops, typo in my 2nd comment/question: meant to say "the filter dimension "social source referral" and the report metric "avg. page load time (sec)" are not available choices!

  9. 14

    Long time listener, first time caller. :)

    This is a such a great collection of reports. Our company is currently on a social media warpath, your SM Performance report is a good reminder to not just worry about what is happening on Facebook and Twitter. We are using your Best Social Metrics there. The tabs in this report will bring the focus back to what's important – our business success.

    Thanks for working hard on our behalf. I'm sure this is not easy work.

  10. 15
    Brad Ranks says

    HI All,

    First, thanks for these reports, I always love templates :)

    I wanted to bring up a point that has been plaguing me for some time now and see if anyone can lend some insight into my issue.

    Since I work in analytics daily and often produce reports to make decisions, there are certain fundamental things that we have come to rely upon. These fundamental things are the very definition of the terms we use to describe a piece of information and what that information means. As an example "page view" is a term that we all know and we know the definition of right?

    I think we are at a point where the very fundamental building blocks that we rely upon have been rocked and changed. A page view can now be launched without an actual view and with "browser accelerators", analytics code is launching without the user ever visiting the page.

    This came to my attention from a site that was hacked, that only had links to us in javascript code. We were seeing tons of visitors in analytics, without one page ever being launched.

    How can I go back and report to peers and owners with percentages of conversion, when the fundamental points of measurement are not stable?

    Thanks for reading!

    • 16

      Brad: There are two threads that might be getting conflated in your comment.

      First, there really are no standards that most web analytics vendors follow to compute their metrics. A visit, user, pageview or even bounce rate might be computed differently. This is not taking into account the other hidden things like when to terminate a session or how to deal with clicks on outbound links. I do not anticipate that anything will change here anytime soon. There simply is no incentive.

      Second, the quality of date being collected. For the most part robots (what you call browser accelerators) don't execute your javascript code, so it does not hurt you. Some of them do, but any analytics vendor works hard to catch them and keep your data clean. For a very small percentage, they don't get caught but the impact on your data is small. If it is big, and you see it, it is likely the vendor will catch it too (or you can create a filtered view to exclude it).

      If you want someone to dig into your data, it is best to hire an authorized consultant to do it, they are quite affordable. Here's a list: http://www.bit.ly/gaac

      Avinash.

  11. 17

    Wow, thank you so much for sharing! You just blew my tasklist…

    We've been hunting for unique content in the past months and years.

    I guess we should now revert to analyzing how it's doing and what we should fix in the future.

  12. 18

    Hi Avinash,

    Thank you for another great article. I've been working as an analyst only for a year, I am still learning and I am always very happy to see a new article from you. They are very inspirational. I recently received your book Web Analytics 2.0 as a gift and what can I say, amazing reading :)

    I used a similar solution you mentioned in the first custom report as a way to fight with referral spam traffic. I set up a filter in my test view to show only traffic coming from the chosen hostnames, still not sure whether this is a good solution or not as it might cause our Multi-Channel Funnels reports to be inaccurate.

    Thank you again for sharing your knowledge with us.

    • 19

      Lucia: Thanks so much for the kind words, much appreciated.

      I'm not quite sure what you have set up. Please consider getting help from an authorized consultant, here's a list: http://www.bit.ly/gaac

      If you have set up a filter in a different view, one simple thing you can do is check the same reports in your master profile. That will how you if some impact is there (there should not, but I don't know enough of what you are doing).

      Avinash.

  13. 20

    Hey Avinash, another great post!

    For your "Campaign Cost Analysis" report, if you're interested in using cost data from additional sources, like Bing Ads or Facebook Ads, take a look at my company's new product, Analyze.ly. It can automate uploading cost data (and really any other kind of data) into Google Analytics.

  14. 21

    I've known the power of custom report for a time. But your article is much more specific.

    There is just a point. If using GA to know who scrape your info, is that really exact? I don't know how it can count the scrapers. And I don't think it can count the people who just copy merely the word without the GA code (how can they pollute your data if they don't get your GA code in their post?).

    So this way we still cannot know the influence of content copyright violation.

    But thank you, many cases here are very useful & eye opening.

    • 22

      Dong: Consider the first report as simply a demonstration of what GA can do, especially with hidden metrics and dimensions you might not know you have access to.

      Specific to your question, some scrapers will take everything, including your GA code. This is simply a test for that.

      It does not happen enough to warrant worrying about copyright violation etc. As I said, it is better to obsess on our own traffic (and increasing it!).

      Avinash.

  15. 23

    Really nice post Avinash about custom reports. A few additions:

    1. Is it on purpose that you used explorer reports and not flat table reports? I like the following flat table reports:

    Traffic sources in combination with device category
    Internal search terms with refined search queries
    Content groupings with pages
    Search relevancy AdWords campaigns (keyword with matched search query)

    2. You have chosen for the dimension traffic type in the report business outcomes analyses. Shouldn't you chose for channel groupings instead? I think youtube/reddit different traffic types then Googleplex and moma corp. Do you agree with that statement?

    3. In the tab non-ecommerce analyses (report business outcomes analyses) there are only acquisition and outcomes metrics. I think you should add micro-goals in this report like newsletter subscriptions or whitepaper downloads. Do you agree with that set-up?

    4. Do you know if it will be possible to set up funnels with custom reports in the near future?

    • 24

      Gerard: Thanks for sharing your tips and thoughts! Much appreciated.

      1. I like exploring. :) On a serious note… In some cases, that you describe, flat tables work well. But, if you don't know exactly the answer you want then flat tables can get a bit out of hand. It is good though to experiment.

      2. Channel grouping and traffic type are two different ways of aggregating the data. Channel grouping is newer. In some cases though I prefer using traffic type (as in you can see in the Business Outcomes Analysis report, it looks a lot cleaner and straightforward).

      In the examples you see in the screenshot, all of them are referrals.

      3. You can add specific micro-outcomes. In this case because this is a shareable report, I added all goal completions as I did not know what a reader of this blog might have set up.

      4. No comment. :) (Though I have to admit, with the new enhanced eCommerce reports, why would you need this.)

      Avinash.

  16. 25

    A good and informative collection of reports!

    Thanks for sharing and making our day-to-day life a lot easier Avinash.

    Bless you.

  17. 26

    Amazing as usual Avinash, thanks for the awesome reports.

    The visualization is pretty neat and great for decision makers to easily see what's going on.

    Love it!

  18. 27

    Awesome custom reports!

    Can't wait to use these to try and add some value in educating my own clients..

  19. 28

    EXCELLENT ! Google Analytics can be a minefield. This is really good guideance to acheiving the best ROI with campaigns.

    Thanks Again

  20. 29

    I can't believe there was a metric called "Number of sessions per user" and I never realized it existed! It's an amazing one.

    And I agree that cost import is a feature that most people don't use and it's critical to understand which things are being done in the right way and which things are just wasting money.

    Nice post!

  21. 30
    Priscrilla Cook says

    Superb Article!

    I am very new to analytics, trying to learn. Your article has helped me a lot in learning some new tricks.

    Yes, custom reports according to your need are always a good idea as it gives you just the data you want to know about.

  22. 31

    Great share Sir… This is my fourth visit to your blog and every time I get a new thing to learn about internet marketing. This post is also so much helpful for me. This will help me a lot in learning some new tricks in Google Analytics.

  23. 32

    This article is wonderfully written and so easy to understand.

    The reports you've shared are meaningful and direct to the point. It's a great article for tech lovers and companies using Google Analytics for their Data. Thanks!

  24. 33

    Avinash, love these reports. I especially like the dimension drilldown in the social report. Adding that second level changes it from a static dashboard to a something much more insightful and actionable.

    A couple custom reports I really love:
    1) Doing the same thing you did for social with organic search. Since keyword data is now fully encrypted from organic sources, the landing page report is your best go-to for insight.

    2) An eCommerce outcomes report for Google Shopping campaigns. I like to do "matched search query" then drill down into products sold. It really helps you get down to the product & search query level of a Shopping campaign rather than staying at 30,000 feet and just working with campaigns/adgroups.

    This is actually a really useful custom report for any eCommerce campaign. It connects the marketing with the merchandising, a gap rarely bridged sadly. I explain it a little more thoroughly here: http://marketingland.com/3-hidden-google-analytics-reports-retailers-131838

    Great article, using the social one for sure.

    • 34

      Dave: Both really excellent ideas for custom reports, thank you for sharing them with us.

      The second one is usually particularly insightful. Matched Search Query is such an insightful dimension to focus on as we get to understand what people really typed into Google, rather than just the words we are buying.

      -Avinash.

  25. 35
    Ravinder dande says

    Hi Avinash,

    Very amazing and useful set of reports.

    I'm new to analytics so learning how to use the tools we have in the best manner. Half of my questions were cleared up by this post, so no need to go elsewhere.

    Thank you.

  26. 36
    Daniel Joya says

    Hi Avinash,

    I've been wondering about the uses of the metrics Users + Sessions you have on these reports, and others you have shared in the past.

    The problem is that everytime I used these 2 metrics together I ended up with sample data from google analytics, which I can't later compare since the data changes.

    I wonder if it is worth to show sessions (with bounce rate, goals, etc) and add users later on and with a vlookup add it in the end.

    Or is it ok to keep using sample data and I'm just crazy about it.

    Big Fan,

    Good Luck.

    • 37

      Daniel: Sampling comes into effect when you are querying "too much data". GA defines this as a date range that exceeds 500k sessions (25 million for GA Premium). So, it does not matter what metric you choose to have in your custom report (as the report still has to look over that many sessions to get you the answers).

      More here: How sampling works

      Remember, sampling comes into effect because you are asking for lots of data and by using sampling GA (or any other tool) is trying to give you the answer quickly rather than wait forever. But. You can get around this by using GA Permium where the sampling limits are higher or you also have additional querying options.

      Avinash.

  27. 38
    Ratan Shiva says

    Thanks for the wonderful collection of reports Avinash.

    I appreciate the detail that you go into. I'm quite experienced in Google Analytics and yet I pick up many nuances I had not considered before. Keep rocking!

  28. 39

    Hi Avanash. Another suggestion for your Social Media Performance report. I found that by creating an additional tab that showed the gender breakdown per social source, it gave me a better understanding who my audience was within each social stream and which gender was generating the better outcomes. The same principle can be applied to age. It allows me to focus the client on the buyer persona that they need to be focusing on within each relevant social channel. this simple extension to this custom report provides an enormous extra bonus for little effort. brian

    • 40

      Brian: This is a good suggestion to get a sense of the demographics of the audience.

      The challenge is how to use the data. Can we know who the person is when they land, can we deliver them some unique content or message? Or, perhaps, that we can write our content in a certain way? And other such questions. If we can have this actionability, demographic data can be of even more value.

      Avinash.

  29. 41
    Jesse Wojdylo says

    Boy do I love Google Analytics but it has gotten more complicated over the years. I can remember the days of being able to see all the keywords that were searched to reach your site. Now you have to go into multiple layers of Google Analytics just to see which articles or blog posts searchers are landing on.

    That said, Google offers many great free features that help any numbers cruncher figure out how visitors are getting to their website.

    All of the features mentioned in this article are fantastic. I am going to have to set aside an hour or two to start implementing a few of the ones you mentioned.

    Great article!

  30. 42

    Great post as usual Avinash.

    These will be actionable for our agency.

  31. 43

    Campaign cost report is a good kick in the rear-end as we are not focused on that at all, and we should be.

  32. 44

    As always, a really good blogpost.

    The custom report I use the most myself is
    Dimension: Pagepath level 1
    Sec dimension: Pagepath level 2
    Metrics: Entrances, bouncerate

    Filter: Medium== organic

    This report show me which area of the website recieves the most traffic from organic search. Often i find my client get a lot of traffic to content pages (news, blogpost etc), but with high BR. This report gives a great overview, instead of looking at the particular pages.

  33. 45
    Shane Cunningham says

    I need help find a custom report (or figuring out how to generate it directly from Google Analytics' tools), that very simply shows me the domains for users who clicked on AdWords ads and came to my site. To me, this should be something very easy to do once you have both AdWords and Analytics accounts linked, but apparently this is complicated for some reason because a simple search to find a report that provides the following information is unnecessarily difficult to find:

    Google AdWord Campaign > Total Users > User Domains

    That is all I want to know, but I can neither find a report that already provides that, nor find a way to get all on the same report. Please let me know if one of your reports provides this or where I can download a report that does. Thanks.

    • 46

      Shane: You can do the reporting you would like to.

      You can go to the Audience folder, click on Technology, then click on Network to get a report. Here you can see the Service Provider and Hostname of the people who come to your site. If you want this data for a particular set of your traffic (say AdWords), just create an Advanced Segment and apply it to this report.

      If you would like more help with GA, what you are asking for are answerable questions, please hire a GACP who can help you create the reports you are looking for. Here's a list: http://www.bit.ly/gaac

      -Avinash.

  34. 47

    Thank you!

    The social media analysis report is amazing.

Trackbacks

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