Google Analytics

Custom Report ImportTo obtain your Google Analytics custom reports, you will begin by clicking on the links below to pull your reports into your Google Analytics accounts. You will only need to do this step once. In the future when you login, the reports will already be in your Google Analytics account under the ‘Customization’ tab in the top navigation.

General Report:

https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/template?uid=owR5qOEYTs-e6_vSmtZtkQ

Social Media Performance:

https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/template?uid=aV1s_rxJRHmeofLW-JaD4g

Begin by clicking on one of the custom report links provided above. We will start with the General Repot link. You will be prompted to login with your uark.edu account.

Once you are logged in, a window will appear saying, ‘A Custom Report configuration was shared with you.’

In the ‘Select a view’ drop down menu, select your department’s url from the list to import the report to.

Then click the blue ‘Create’ button.

When the report is imported, you will be taken to the General Report under the ‘Customization’ tab in the top navigation. In the future when you login, you will go straight to the ‘Customization’ tab in the top navigation to view this report.

Now let’s import the Social Media report using the same steps. Click on this link and follow the steps from above to import the report by clicking on the url for your department in the ‘Select a view’ drop down menu.

LoginBegin by going to https://www.google.com/analytics/.

Once you are on the home Google Analytics page, click on the ‘Sign In’ drop-down in the top, right corner of the page.

Select ‘Google Analytics’ in the drop down.

Screen shot of Google Analytics page once signed in indicating selection of 'Google Analytics' in the top, right drop down.

Custom ReportsTo access your custom reports once they are imported, login to Google Analytics through the following steps:

When you login, you are brought to the Home page of your Google Analytics dashboard. You will have four items in the top navigation. The tab that you will be using is the ‘Customization’ tab.

This will have a listing of all of the websites you have access to. You may only have one site in the listing. Click on the site.

After you click on your site and the dashboard for that site opens, click on the ‘Customization’ button at the top of the page. This will open the Custom Reports dashboard including the two reports you imported.

Click on the report from the list that you would like to view.

General ReportYour General report will open up showing you four report options including Page Views and Referrals, Location of Users, Technology and Browser and Average Peak Time.

When viewing your reports it is important to set the time period that you want the report to pull from. This is set in the top, right corner of your report. You can also set this by Day, Week or Month and view as either a Line Chart or a Motion Chart.

When you drill down into specific information in the reports, know that all of the specifics for that report are being pulled together. You can see this in the breadcrumbs in the top of the page. If you want to start fresh with new information, click back to the area in the breadcrumbs that you would like to go back to (‘All’). Or, you can use that information across all four tabs to pull pageviews from a town in Arkansas and see what browser they used and what the peak time was. The specifics of the information you pull is up to you.

ExportYou can export any report you are viewing by clicking the ‘Export’ tab in the top, sub navigation.

Page Views and ReferralsPage – The pages visited, listed by URI. The URI is the portion of the page’s URL following the domain name; for example, the URI portion of www.example.com/contact.html is /contact.html.Pageviews – Pageviews is the total number of pages viewed. Repeated views of a single page are counted.Unique Pageviews – Unique Pageviews is the number of sessions during which the specified page was viewed at least once. A unique pageview is counted for each page URL + page Title combination.Users – Users that have had at least one session within the selected date range. Includes both new and returning users.New Users – New Users is the number of first-time users during the selected date range.Bounce Rate – Bounce Rate is the percentage of single-page visits (i.e. visits in which the person left your site from the entrance page without interacting with the page).Avg. Time on Page – The Average Time On Page is the average amount of time users spent viewing a specified page or screen, or set of pages of screens.

To view the Page Views and Referrals report for a specific page, click on the link in the Page listing. This will take you to a breakdown of that page’s report.

This breakdown will tell you the page referral, the total number of page views, the number of unique page views, the number of users, new users, bounce rate and average time on page.

Location of UsersThis tab shows you where your users are located on a map. You can click on areas of the map to zoom in and get a more detailed report for that area. Under the map provides information about the location (continent, country, state, town, etc.), Pageviews, Unique Pageviews and Bounce Rate.

Also, when you hover over an area, it gives you a Pageviews number for that area.

Technology and BrowserYou can see what technology (desktop, mobile or tablet) is being used to view your website.

When you click on one of the technology options in the list, for instance, desktop, a new page will open showing you a listing of browsers that were used to view that page on their desktop.

Average Peak TimeThe Average Peak Time will show you the month of the year in the first column.

When you click on the month, it will take you to a listing of top days of the week listed from highest to lowest.

You can click on the day to view the peak hours of the day that your page was viewed.

Social Media PerformanceThe Social Media Performance custom report gives in information on what social networks your website viewers are coming from, what posts created the highest traffic to your site, what the peak dates and times of those posts were and your location of users.

Social NetworkThe first tab is for the Social Network. This tab has a graph of users by day, week or year and a listing of the different social networks listed by number of users.

Social Network – Originating Social Network or the social network where the activity originated.Users – Users that have had at least one session within the selected date range. Includes both new and returning users.Number of Sessions per User – Average number of Sessions per user.Pages/Sessions – Average Page Depth or the average number of pages viewed during a session. Repeated views of a single page are counted.

Content AnalysisContent Analysis will show you the pages that were reached by social networks. The listing of pages is ordered by most hits to least hit.

When you click on the page in the listing, it will show you want social media networks were used to get to that webpage. From this you can track what article and what social network let to the most hits on a webpage.

By selecting one of the social networks listed, you can see a report of specific dates that produced the most traffic.

You can click on one of the dates listed to see the day of week with the most traffic. This can help you develop a social media strategy and a posting schedule.

By clicking on the day of the week, you can see a listing of the peak hours of the day.

Peak Dates and TimesThis is a report of peak dates and times of day. The listing shows the hour of the day that received the most pageviews from social media networks.

Location of UsersThis provides you with a clickable world map of where your page traffic from social media networks are located. The locations are shown in different shades of blue with the darker areas having the higher numbers. A listing of sub continents is listed below that are also clickable.

By clicking on the different areas (or selecting from the list) you can drill down to more specific areas.

For information about advanced Google Analytics training, contact webhelp@uark.edu.