Google Analytics Solutions Gallery

[Wayne Liew]

If you have done some reading on Internet marketing, you would have come across Google Analytics. However, most of us focus on vanity metrics (visits, traffic sources, etc.) rather than actionable metrics.

In fact, Google Analytics, if you are not technical enough, is set up in a way that focuses on vanity traffic.

Today, I came across the Solutions Gallery (http://www.google.com/analytics/learn/solutions-gallery.html) by none other than Google Analytics itself, which provides pre-made dashboards, advanced segments and custom reports that provide a deeper look into the data about your website and site visitors.

Yes, you will be able to make slight adjustments to these "solutions" so that the data can be more relevant to your business or website.

Let me know what do you think about the solutions. Cheers!

[nealrm]

That for posting about an interested Gallery. It highlights that analytic has many more uses than just tracking the number of visitors. However, I really don't like the term 'vanity metrics', it downplays some extremely important metrics. I think a better term would be 'result metrics'. I think this fits well with the 'Actionable Metrics' term. If you get your 'Actionable metric' correct, then you 'result metrics' will be good.

[dianecoleen]

You can learn thoroughly with the help of this additional feature of Google Analytics. With Advance Segment, you can easily distinguish the traffic coming from one referral to another, i.e., you can sort out from which social media network you're getting the referral traffic. Thus, you'll be able to analyze if the implemented marketing campaign is working on your website. Through this custom reports, you can easily understand the numbers even if you are a novice in reading Analytics.

[vangogh]

Thanks for the link. I had never seen these. I already downloaded one of the dashboards. Very nice stuff and very easy to add to Analytics. I need to remind myself to look through more of what's at the GA site instead of making a beeline to my stats.

[MikeAppleton]

Without doubt most people using Analytics use it vainly. For me it's biggest value is checking where my visitors drop. My marketing guy walked me through it and I'm much better able to define changes required now.

[vangogh]

I hear you. I'd like to say I use Analytics as well as I could, but I'd be lying. I do know enough not to take some numbers seriously and I generally know which information gives me the picture I want. What I'm not so good at is setting up all the custom stuff so I can get a better and quicker picture and I'm not so good at setting things up to take action on.

[KristineS]

Thanks for the link, Wayne. This looks as though it could be useful.

I tend to use Analytics more for knowing where people are coming from and what marketing we're doing is generating results. I don't really spend as much time as I should looking at where people hit the site and where they drop off. I know our bounce rate is decent as is our time on page, but I should pay more attention to where people drop. I'll have to look at the info in the solutions gallery and see if I can set up something to help me focus more.