Welcome to a Guided Tour of the Google

Analytics interface
Account/Property/View switcher

If you have multiple accounts, properties, or views set up, you can easily switch between them by clicking on
the pulldown menu with the title of your View in the upper-left corner.

When you open up the account picker, you can select by account, property, or view. You can also search any
of these by name. To close the Account picker, click anywhere on the screen outside of the picker.

Alert icon

Clicking the bell icon in the upper right shows you alerts about your Google Analytics properties and views.

Alert menu
This may include data that is not collecting properly or a setting that needs to be optimized. To close the Alerts
menu, click anywhere on the screen outside of the alerts.

Feedback, Help, and Settings

At the top right of your Analytics view are two more icons:

 The "question mark" icon lets you send feedback to Google Analytics or search Help articles
 The user icon lets you switch between different Google accounts, manage your current Google
account, or sign out

Customization
The Customization section allows you to create custom reports, specific to your business. We'll cover
customization in an advanced course.

Left-hand navigation

To navigate between reports, you’ll use the navigation on the left. Clicking on each of these sections will
expose the reports that belong to each section.

Real-Time Reports

Real-Time reports let you look at live user behavior on your website including information like where your
users are coming from and if they’re converting.
Audience Reports

Audience reports show you characteristics about your users like age and gender, where they’re from, their
interests, how engaged they were, whether they’re new or returning users, and what technology they’re using.

Acquisition Reports

Acquisition reports show you which channels (such as advertising or marketing campaigns) brought users to
your site. This could include different marketing channels such as:

 "Organic” (or unpaid search)

 “CPC” (“cost per click” or paid search)
 “Referral” (traffic that comes from another website)
 “Social” (from a social network)
 or “Other,” (a group of low volume traffic sources)

Behavior Reports

Behavior reports show how people engaged on your site including which pages they viewed, and their landing
and exit pages. With additional implementation, you can even track what your users searched for on your site
and whether they interacted with specific elements.

Conversion Reports

Conversion reports allow you to track website goals based on your business objectives.
Admin

The Admin section contains all of your Google Analytics settings such as user permissions, tracking code,
view settings, and filters.

Collapse left-hand navigation

Use this pointer to shrink the navigation and provide more space for your reports.

Welcome to a Guided Tour of the Audience

Overview Report
Date range

At the top of every report is a date-range. This lets you set the time period in which you want to analyze report
data. Click the date range to open up the date range selector.
Date range selector

This opens up a calendar on the left where you can select your date ranges. When you change the date range, it
affects all of the reports in your view. So you can switch between different reports without having to adjust the
date range each time.

You can choose between date ranges like last week, last calendar month, or last 30 days. But you can also set
specific dates by clicking the start- and end-date fields and selecting calendar dates. If you’d like to select an
entire month, simply click on the name of the month in the calendar to the left.

Date Range Comparison

You can also compare data from two different date ranges by clicking "Compare to" and adding in the date
ranges you wish to compare. This lets you to see how your business changed over time. 
Segment Picker

At the top of the report, notice the segment picker. Segments are ways to look at a specific data set and
compare metrics. We’ll cover this in an advanced course. For now, notice that the default segment includes all
of the Users that visited your site in the given date range.

Line Graph

Below the segment picker are the different metrics of the Audience Overview report shown in different
formats. The most prominent is a line graph that by default shows a data point for the number of users on each
day over your selected date range. 
Duration Selector

If you wish to view this data more specifically, you can change the data points to show hourly, weekly, or
monthly, as well. This can be especially helpful when looking at large date sets. If you are looking at data over
a single day, the view will default to hourly.

Metric Selector

You can change the metric shown from users to a different metric by selecting the drop-down menu under the
Overview tab. Analytics lets you compare this to a second metric over the same time period by clicking “Select
a metric”.
Graph Annotator

Notice the small arrow at the bottom of the line graph. Clicking on the arrow lets you annotate the graph with
helpful notes to add business context to your data. Once you add an annotation, a small indicator will appear
on the graph that can be viewed by other users with access to the view. Clicking any of the metrics below will
show the data points for those metrics in the line graph above.

Metrics

There are a number of helpful metrics beneath the line graph:

 “Sessions” are the total number of sessions for the given date range. 
 “Users” are the total number of users that visited for the given date range,
 “Pageviews” are the total number of times pages that included your Analytics tracking code were
displayed to users. This includes repeated viewings of a single page by the same user.
 “Pages per session” is the average number of pages viewed during each session. This also includes
repeated viewings of a single page.
 “Average session duration” is the average length of a session based on users that visited your site in
the selected date range.
 “Bounce rate” is the percentage of users who left after viewing a single page on your site and taking
no additional action.
 “Percent of new sessions” is the percentage of sessions in your date range who are new users to your
site.

New vs. Returning Users

To the right of the metrics is a pie chart illustrating the percentage of new vs. returning users.

Dimensions and Metrics

Understanding Dimensions and Metrics (0:51)

Clicking into the dimensions on the bottom left of the report, will allow you to see the top 10 dimensions and
metrics in each category. 
Language Dimension

The default dimension selected in the Audience Overview report is “Language.” Note that the table to the right
includes the top 10 values for Language. You can also select "Country" or "City" to view the top 10 values for
those dimensions.

To view metrics about what technology people are using to view your site, click Browser or Operating System.

Navigating full reports: Part 1

Introduction

Previously, we showed you a high-level version of the “Audience Overview” report. At the bottom of that
report, there’s a link to “view full report,” where you can see expanded versions of each Audience report in the
left-hand navigation.

Now, let’s check out a full report.

When you open up the full report, you’ll see links underneath the segment picker that control the different
types of data in the report. The “Summary” view is a summary of the dimension categorized by Acquisition,
Behavior, and Conversion metrics. This makes it easier to interpret these metrics in the context of the
marketing funnel we discussed in Unit 1.

“Site Usage” shows behavior metrics like users, sessions per user, new users, sessions, pages per session, and
average session duration. “Goals” will show metrics based on the number of goals you’ve configured and will
only show up if you’ve set up goals in Google Analytics, which we’ll discuss later. And “Ecommerce” will
show you transaction metrics if you’ve set up ecommerce tracking in Analytics. Now let’s switch back to the
Summary view.

Below the graph is the main data table. You can see that the first column shows the current dimension
“Country,” which was the last demographic category we selected in the Overview report. You can switch
between other dimensions like city, continent, and subcontinent by clicking the links above the data table. It’s
important to know you can also add another dimension to the table for even more specific analysis. We call
this a secondary dimension, which is a common technique when analyzing data. For example, you could add a
secondary dimension of “device category” to the Location report to see what kinds of devices were used by
people in different countries while visiting your website.
Here you can see that each row of the table represents a different segment of traffic in the “Country”
dimension. Note that Analytics is only showing you the first 10 rows of data and only as many columns as will
fit on the screen. To view additional rows, use the “Show rows” pulldown menu on the bottom-right side of the
table to select how many rows you want to see, or use the left and right arrows to scroll through 10 rows at a
time. If you wish to view all of the columns, you may need to use the horizontal scroll bar at the bottom of the
report.

You can analyze the data table in different ways. Clicking on each column in the table toggles the data sort
between ascending and descending. The arrow in the column header shows which column you’re currently
sorting by. Note that by default, Analytics sorts this report by users.

It can also be useful to filter the data table to focus only on the segments of traffic that are significant. Use the
filter field at the top of the table to include only rows where the primary dimension contains your filter term.
For example, you may want to look at data for a specific country like India, so rather than scroll through the
table, you could simply type “India” into the filter field and Analytics will show you only data for segments
that include the term “India.” “Advanced,” next to the search box, lets you apply even more sophisticated rules
for filtering. We’ll cover techniques for advanced filtering in an advanced course.

Report Visualization

 Next to the “advanced” link, there are several different visualization options:
 The “data table” view is the default visualization for most reports. This organizes your data in a table
broken out by acquisition, behavior, and conversion metrics for the audience and acquisition reports.
 The “pie chart” icon creates a pie chart based on your data. This helps you compare the percentages of
a whole such as how many users are on desktops, tablets, and mobile phones. You can choose which
metric from your report should display in the pie chart using the pulldown menu.
 The “performance” view shows a bar graph of your data. This helps you compare individual segments
side by side like which countries bring in the highest traffic. You can also use the pull-down menu to
select various metrics to be represented as bars.
  The “comparison view” shows you a bar graph to quickly see whether each entry in the table is
performing above or below the site average for the selected metric. If the value for a given row is
better than average, it appears green. If it’s below average, it appears red. Again, you can use the drop-
down menu to select which metric should be displayed.
 Finally, the “Pivot” view creates a pivot table in which both rows and columns can show different
dimension values for comparison. For example, a pivot table could show The Google Store the bounce
rate and number of sessions for each landing page and device type.

How to share reports

Sharing and customizing reports

Once you’ve found meaningful data in your reports, Google Analytics offers several ways to share or refer
back to that report under the report name at the top.

 “Save” lets you create a link to the specific report in the Customization area in the left-hand
navigation under “Saved Reports.”
 “Export” lets you save a report to your desktop in different file formats such as PDF or CSV.
 “Share” lets you email a copy of the report as an attachment and even schedule regular email updates.
 “Edit” lets you customize the report content by adding metric groups, filters, or additional views. This
creates a new report in the Customization area of the left-hand navigation under “Custom Reports.”
We'll cover Custom Reports in the advanced course.
Hover over the green check icon next to the report name to view the percent of sessions that the report is based
on. Sometimes, Analytics has to crunch through so much data, that in order to return your report faster, it will
only analyze a sample of the data collected. This is called “sampling” because it returns an estimate of the
exact count based on a sample of your data.

To change the report sampling rate, mouse over the green data quality icon and click the pulldown menu. If
you want your data to be more accurate and don’t mind the additional response time, leave this set to "Greater
Precision". If you wish to speed up the time it takes to generate a report and are willing to sacrifice more
precise metrics, select “Faster response.”

Introduction to dashboards and shortcuts

As we’ve been going through and looking at various reports, it’s clear that some of these metrics will be more
useful for your business than others. In some cases, there may even be metrics you want to check regularly to
gauge the health of your business or a particular ad campaign. You can use dashboards and shortcuts to quickly
find these metrics without having to navigate to a specific report.

Dashboards

Dashboards are flexible and may be used for different purposes. For example, you could create an overview of
how your site is performing by displaying summaries of different reports as widgets together on a single page.
Or you could gather a list of critical business metrics that show the state of your business at a glance or
compare different reports side by side.

Click “Customization,” then “Dashboards” in the left-hand navigation to view the reports that you’ve
collected. To create a new dashboard, click Create, select a blank or starter dashboard, and give your
dashboard a name.

You can add widgets to a dashboard by clicking “Add Widget”. This will let you name the widget that you
want to appear on the dashboard and select a visualization type. You can choose to view the data as a number,
a timeline, a map, a table, a pie chart, or a bar graph.
You can select some of these visualizations for standard or real-time metrics. Use the “Add a metric” pulldown
menu below to search and add the particular metric you want to include. You can even add filters to the report
widget once you’ve brought it into the dashboard, similar to the way we set filters at the view level earlier.

Once you have created a dashboard, you can format it by clicking “Customize Dashboard” and selecting a
layout. You can also drag and drop existing widgets to different locations within the dashboard. Mousing over
a widget will reveal an edit icon that you can use to edit the data coming into the report widget. It also reveals
a delete icon that allows you to remove the widget from the dashboard.

There are two types of dashboards: private and shared. A private dashboard is only visible to you within that
view. A shared dashboard can be seen by anyone who has access to that view. You can have 20 private
dashboards per user and 50 shared dashboards per view. If you share the dashboard with other users, they can
change what shows up on their dashboard, but their changes will only be visible to them. Your original shared
dashboard cannot be changed by another user.
If you want to share a dashboard, simply click “Share” at the top. “Share Template Link” will provide a link to
your dashboard template that can be added to any other view, but don’t worry, this won’t include any of your
Analytics data.

If you wish to share your template more broadly, you can add the dashboard template to the “Google Analytics
Solutions Gallery” by clicking “Share in Solutions Gallery.” The Solutions Gallery is a place where Google
Analytics users can share different types of customizations like dashboards. It’s also a great place to find
dashboard templates that you can import and then customize for your own business.
Save Reports

You can also save reports in order to view them later by clicking “Save” at the top of most reports. When you
save reports, they include any customizations you’ve made to the report. For example, if you’ve filtered the
data table, then that filter will automatically be applied when you access the report from the Customization
area under Saved Reports.

Use dashboards and Saved Reports to easily retrieve data that’s valuable to your business, or share them with
other stakeholders. Be sure to check out the “Google Analytics Solutions Gallery” for some great ideas.