Work Smart, Not Hard – An Introduction To Google Analytics Dashboards

I love my Google Analytics dashboard and I’m not ashamed to admit it. It saves me time, helps me look like I’m 100% on top of things when a client calls, and helps me add hours back into days that were previously spent hunting and pecking for information.

Right now, my client load consists of about 19 different domains that all have their own analytics installs. Each week that’s a lot of information to check, verify, monitor, and create an action plan from. Without my dashboards, and most importantly, my consistently formatted dashboards, I would spend hours finding information – now I have it all at the tip of my fingers.

Formatting dashboards across multiple installations used to be a pain. I’d have to open one client’s dashboard, then add widgets to another client’s dashboard one by one and arrange them in the order I prefer to see them. This was definitely a tedious and time consuming task.

Then I saw something magical in my dashboard one day – a simple little link. I knew I had just gained yet another chunk of time with which I can spend to make my clients’ money, as opposed to looking for data. I’m not sure how long this link has been there, so many changes have been happening in Google Analytics lately, who knows when it first appeared. Now that I see it, I just had to share, because it’s something that is going to make your life so much easier, I promise.

Before we talk about the magic, let’s talk about KPIs. What should you be looking at on a daily or weekly basis?

To be honest, that really depends on what is important to you. As I’ve shared before, all of my clients are in hospitality, and 99% of them are lodging hospitality of some sort, so the KPIs I monitor on a daily or weekly basis are similar for the most part.

Here is a list of the KPIs I look at and the order in which I have them set up in my analytics dashboard.

Revenue
Bounce Rate
Referrers
Transactions
Visits
Organic Visits
Paid Keywords
Landing Page
Unique Events (this is a click on a call to action – generally a “Book Now” type action)
Because I stay organized, and I keep every widget in the same spot, for every client’s dashboard, I can efficiently find information. An unexpected client call doesn’t leave me with uncomfortable silences while I log in and dig through links to find data; I have it all at the tip of my fingers.

I promised you magic, so here it is. Now within your Google Analytics dashboard, you can click “Share Dashboard” – and magically you’re provided with a link you can paste into a browser while logged into another account, and it will create your dashboard with the new client’s data pulled in.

Here’s How It Works
Have your dashboard set up the way you’d like it in one account. At the top of the “Home” page click on “Share Dashboard.”



You’ll be given a link – copy it somewhere safe for the next few minutes.



Now, login to your next client’s Google Analtyics account. (See the quick tip below for details on how to make this easier.)

Go to their profile and simply paste the URL into the browser. You’ll be asked which profile you want to add the dashboard to:



Once you choose your profile from the drop down menu, give you dashboard its name – you may want to set up a different dashboard for your client, they might like to see different data than you do. Click “Create Dashboard”.

Your dashboard will appear, in the order you want it, with the new profile’s data populated for your convenience.

Quick Tip for Beginners who review multiple accounts:

Set up a Google account and make it an administrator for all of your client’s analytics accounts. Do not create new profiles with your own Google account, you want the client to own their own data, so make sure you’re in their account when you set up new profiles and installations. By adding yourself to their account with administrative access, you can access every Google Analytics profile with one username and password.

If you and your client decide to go separate ways, they own their data, and can disable your access. If a new client comes on board, they can add you easily enough to their existing installation. Personally, I think it is 100% shady when an agency says they own your GA data because it’s in their dashboard and “can’t” give you the account. Yes, I’ve seen it happen more than once.

Helpful tips like those I’ve given you above are invaluable to making your work life more efficient and less tedious. If your day depends upon pockets of time, this technique will give you more of those pockets and less headaches.

As always, I’m very interested in any time-saving analytics tips you might have – please share them in the comments below – I know I’m not the only one looking for more time in my already hectic day!

Basic Features for SEO

Behind the scenes, there are a lot of components that keep a website up and running. It’s possible, and maybe even practical (depending on your business situation), to launch and run your website without many features enabled. Doing so will give you a functioning website, but it won’t give you an optimal one. Here are just a few examples of features you should be using on your site for SEO:

XML Sitemap: Take a look at any well-optimized site, and you won’t have to look far to find a sitemap. It’s one of the most basic features you can add to your site for optimization. The sitemap let’s search engine bots crawl your site more easily by providing a list of available URLs. Making your site easier to index helps it rank better. If you run a large website that updates frequently, you will want to make sure that your CMS is set to automatically update the sitemap when new content is posted.

Robots.txt: You’ll want a robots.txt file for identical reasons as the XML sitemap – to help crawlers do their job more efficiently. Google places a limit on the number of pages it will scan for your site. This can be problematic if you are running a large site – Google will never look at some of your pages. Furthermore, you can not tell Google which pages to index. You can, however, tell them which pages to ignore by using a robots.txt file. This increases the chances that Google will index only the important pages of your site.

Google Analytics: Although not necessary for the operation of your site, a Google Analytics account is necessary from a marketing perspective. If you want to manage your growth and impact on the Internet, or the success of a campaign – the best way is through analytics. Furthermore, the sooner you set up an account, the sooner you can begin collecting data to refer back to when running future campaigns.