Last week, we talked very broadly about Google Analytics – what it is, how to install it and some basic definitions. This week, we’re going to dive a bit deeper and talk about custom reports. I honestly didn’t even know about custom reports until about a month ago. Seriously – that’s how confusing I’ve found Google Analytics and I really hope this breakdown of Google Analytics Custom Reports will give you an idea of some of the custom reports you can run for your site.
There are three custom reports that I’ve found really helpful and I think you might be interested in as well. First, the Busiest Day report. This report will tell you (no mystery here) what days of the week are busiest. It’s easy to set up. From your home page within GA, click on customization. Click on new custom report and then give your report a title (mine is called busiest day, no surprise there!) Under metric groups add sessions and then under dimension drilldowns add day of week. It should look like this:
The fun thing is that you will learn which days get the most traffic over any time period you choose. I learned that I have the highest traffic on weekends, followed by Fridays (no surprise there due to our Friday Five linkup). With this info, I’m going to try to start posting on one weekend day and not posting on Wednesdays (the day I have the least amount of traffic). I’m interested to see how this experiment works!
The second report I’ve been using is the Busiest Time report. Just like the Busiest Day, this one is super simple to set up. You’ll go through all the steps above, just change your dimension drilldowns to hour – everything else remains the same. I learned that by far, my blog sees the most traffic in the evenings. This was news to me! I just assumed that people were reading blogs before they headed into work. WRONG. My busiest time is 9pm. Followed by 8pm, 10pm, 11pm then 7pm. This was so eye opening and it means that I will devote more time to pumping my blog posts in the evening hours. It makes sense that people would catch up with blogs before bed, I just never really connected it all.
Finally, the last report I’ve been using is Unique Visitors by Page. I use this report to see how many people are visiting each page and to examine a particular page / posts success. It’s very helpful and a little more detailed to put together – but still very simple. Your metric groups are users and sessions. Your dimension drilldowns are page, source and keyword. Boom.
I’m still exploring customized reports on GA and having fun with the process. I’d love to hear about any reports you LOVE!
Do you use customized reports? Which ones??
GREAT GREAT post!! This was super fun playing around with the time report. Until today I only had the busiest day report for me (Sunday, Monday, followed by Friday).
Jennifer recently posted…2014 SOME Trot for Hunger 5K Race Recap
i find it so fascinating!
Still trying to figure this all out myself thanks for the tips!
Deborah @ Confessions of a Mother Runner recently posted…Quattro Vegetali Bake-Meatless Monday
me too! i’m taking it one step at a time
GA has more reports then I will ever know what to do with…haha. thanks for breaking it down some! -M
me too, girl!! so many choices!!
Really useful, thanks! I had no idea that you could do custom reports for things like busiest day or time. I clearly need to play around on there a bit more.
Chaitali recently posted…Tasty Tuesday – parmesan oatmeal cookies
i’m learning as i go 🙂
Interesting stats. I too thought that early morning was the busiest time for blog reading, and I’ve read from multiple “experts” that the busiest time on Social Media is from 1-4pm.
Kathryn @ Dancing to Running recently posted…December 2014 Monthly Goals
i think it definitely depends on your audience. clearly, i have some night owls 🙂
You’re teaching me how this all works… thanks!
Rebecca Jo recently posted…The story of my appendix…
thanks for reading – i’m teaching myself as i go along!
This is super helpful! I just launched two new websites at work, and Google Analytics has ALWAYS been Greek to me. I’m setting up these custom reports as a start while I continue to play around with the most useful data to pull out of this tool. Thanks for the screenshots!
you’re welcome – glad it was helpful!
This is great, Courtney! I didn’t even know these were available to use in Google Analytics; I”m definitely going to have to take a look around! Thanks so much for sharing this information, and I hope you are busy packing!!! 🙂
Tara @ Running ‘N’ Reading recently posted…Marathon Training Week 16
im trying!! 🙂
This is AMAZING! Thank you so much! I just set up those reports and it was interesting to see! My busiest times are between 7-9am! And Mondays and Wednesdays are my most popular days which I wasn’t very surprised by. Thank you!!
Sue @ This Mama Runs for Cupcakes recently posted…I Moustache you some questions
isn’t it fascinating???
so interesting. My days were Sunday followed my Monday and Friday. Though I had a viral post on a weekend, which I’m sure skewed my numbers and during MCM training my weekly recaps were pretty high traffic. Not much difference between that and Friday Five days. So fun to look at these!
Mar @ Mar on the Run recently posted…Running Tip of the Month: Motivation
soooo interesting!! i’m super fascinated with all of this 🙂
I need you to come to Memphis and give me a private lesson on all things blogging related. I don’t even know how to use GA, period! You are just amazing.
Cecilia @ MommiesRun recently posted…Real life, a new streak, and goals achieved
i’m still learning myself, lol 🙂
Great tips! I probably spend 30 min on blogs in the am, and then 1-2 hours in the pm.
Coco recently posted…Celebrate Giving Tuesday With CUCB
After getting Google AdSense up and running two weeks ago thanks to your tutorial post, I’ve pulled up a couple of your older posts from my Pinterest blogging board this weekend. So far, I’ve added Google Analytics and linked AdSense to it. I just set up the three custom reports you suggest. Can’t wait to start analyzing everything! Thanks so much, Courtney! You’re the best!
Debbie @ Deb Runs recently posted…Five Reasons I Love Doing My Business Taxes
Oh I’m so glad to hear this! I can’t wait to hear about what you learn 🙂