This week we are looking at Custom Reporting. This handy feature allows you to create customised reports that exactly meet your business needs. These reports will then be easily accessible within your Google Analytics profiles, in addition to the 80+ reports Google Analytics already offers.




What is Custom Reporting?

Custom Reporting allows you to create reports that contain only the information you want to see, displayed in a way you want to see it. You can choose from the various dimensions and metrics that appear in Google Analytics and simply drag and drop these components into your new report!

Here's an overview of what you can include in your report:

• Dimensions in Google Analytics usually refer to visitor or campaign attributes. Dimensions are usually displayed in text format. Examples include: campaign, keyword, city, language.

• Metrics refers to the values or numbers you want to see in your reports, such as bounce rate, time on site, total goal completion.

To find out more about the dimension/metric combinations that are possible visit this help centre article.

How do I create a Custom Report?

Once you know what kind of report you want you can quickly create this from within your Google Analytics account.

Access Custom Reporting on the left hand side of the Google Analytics profile interface.


Next, select the option to 'create a new custom report':

Name your new report, so you can easily find it again, and then simply add the metrics and dimensions you want to the template by dragging and dropping. Select 'create report' to save. From now on you can easily access this report under 'Custom Reporting' menu on the left hand side of your profile interface.

Why would I use a Custom Report?

If you manage your company's website and need to compile reports for different stakeholders, Custom Reporting could make your life a lot easier!

Here are some examples:

• Your marketing team may want to see which countries/cities visitors to your site came from and which marketing campaigns drove them to your site. You can create a Custom Report showing this information and have it emailed to your colleague on a regular basis.

• Your manager may want to know which highly performing keywords could be converting even better. You can create a custom report showing bounce rate, revenue for e-commerce sites or goal completion for lead generation sites down to the keyword level. You could then focus web design and marketing efforts on reducing the bounce rate for these keywords, and therefore improving your conversion rate.

Watch this short YouTube video for a step by step guide to creating your own Custom Reports:



Hopefully you're now ready to create your own unique reports in Google Analytics. If you do want to learn more about Custom Reporting you can visit the Google Analytics help centre.

Next week we will explore Motion Charts and show you how to view your Google Analytics data in a multi-dimensional graph format, allowing you to visualise unusual patterns in your data or opportunities for growth in your business.

If you have any feedback about this post or suggestions for future posts we'd love to hear from you via email.

Posted by Evelyn O'Keeffe, Google Analytics Team

Over the past few months we've added some cool new features to Google Analytics, so this week we'd like to kick off the first in a series of posts showing you how to use these features to analyse your site further.

This week we'll look at Advanced Segmentation.

What is Advanced Segmentation?

Looking at your Google Analytics data en masse may not highlight issues with your site or opportunities for your business. Advanced Segmentation allows you to define specific subsets of traffic to your site. Each subset you define can then be applied to historical and future data in your Google Analytics reports. You can then compare subsets of data to all your data, or even compare multiple subsets.

How do I create an Advanced Segment?

You can access the Advanced Segmentation functionality from the 'settings' box on the left hand side of the Google Analytics interface:

You can also access this feature from the top right grey bar in many of the reports within Google Analytics:

You can then choose from a selection of default segments, or simply and easily create your own segment which will be saved, and can be applied to reports as and when you need that data.

Here are some examples of Advanced Segments you can try out...


Segment by 'branded' traffic:

You can then see the behaviour of users who know your site compared to those who don't.

Create this segment by selecting visits that came from 'direct' or keywords that contain your site name.

Segment out your most common web browser:

Most of your traffic is likely to come from Internet Explorer. Segment out this traffic and look for differences in how your site performs for other browsers. If there are issues your site might need optimisation for these other browsers.

Create this segment by selecting visits from browsers that do not contain 'Internet Explorer'.

Check out this YouTube video to see Advanced Segmentation in use:





Want to know more? Read about Advanced Segmentation in the Google Analytics help centre article or visit Avinash Kaushik's post on the topic here.

Once you master using Advanced Segmentation you may want to share your creation with other Google Analytics users. Our colleagues in the US are currently running a competition to find the most useful Advanced Segment in the world! Find out more at the Google Analytics blog.


Come back next week when we'll focus on Custom Reporting. And as ever, if you have any feedback on the Conversion Room blog, please email us.

This week we announced some feature updates that are coming soon to Google Analytics. These features are currently in beta but will be available in all accounts in the coming weeks. Our new features will provide advanced users of Google Analytics even greater data analysis capabilities.




Pivoting and Secondary Dimensions

Secondary dimensions allow you to view data by two dimensions at once, such as 'keyword' and 'city'. You can then pivot by another dimension such as 'source', while also viewing two additional metrics such as 'visits' and 'pages/visit'. So you can see the total values of your keywords for the 'visits' and 'pages/visit' metrics along with the same metrics pivoted by source.


Check out this video to see how Pivoting and Secondary Dimensions will look in your account:





Share Custom Reports and Advanced Segment Customisations

This week we also announced the ability to share customisations you have made using Custom Reports and Advanced Segmentation. This feature will allow you to share your report structure with colleagues or friends by simply sharing a URL. When people click on the URL you send them they can import the report structure into their own Google Analytics accounts, but they will see their own data in the report and not yours!

Manage Customisations Across Profiles

If you have multiple profiles you will be able to select which profiles can view each of the Custom Reports and Advanced Segments associated with your account. This will ensure you are only applying a customisation to a profile where that report makes sense.


In our next series of Google Analytics posts on the Conversion Room we will highlight some of the other Google Analytics launches of the past year so you are up to speed on all the new features available and how to use them to make your data analysis easier and more effective.

Posted By Evelyn O'Keeffe, Google Analytics Team

If you're an AdWords user, you may have heard that we've made some exciting updates to the AdWords interface which should increase your advertising efficiency and makes it easier for you to improve your results.

The new AdWords interface is now available to all active AdWords accounts in these languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Hebrew, Simplified Chinese, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese.

If your account is in one of the above languages, you'll be directed to the new interface the next time you log in. The previous interface will still be available if you need it. You can switch back and forth using the "New Interface (Beta)" and "Previous Interface" links in the top corner of your account, next to your email address.

Faster insight into performance, more control

The first thing you'll notice when switching to the new AdWords interface is a clear difference in the look and feel of the campaign management pages. In addition to this makeover, we have added a number of features to provide faster insight into performance and control over campaigns. Here are just some of the changes:

Performance summary graphs
See customisable graphs at the account, campaign, and ad group levels of your account. Select up to two metrics to chart on each graph and evaluate your performance trends at a glance.

In-line editing
You can now edit your ads, keywords, placements and bids directly within the tabs in your account. You no longer need to visit a new page to make changes saving time and allowing you to react quickly to changes in performance.

Actionable search query report
See the search queries that delivered clicks from individual keywords within your keywords tab, then add new keywords or negatives to your ad group directly from the report.

Automatic placements report
You can view details for 'Automatic placements' on the Networks tab to see the sites on the Content Network that your ads have appeared on. Easily add sites that are performing well to your managed placements, or exclude sites where you do not wish to appear, from within the report.

Filters
You can now set filters to restrict the data you're viewing to business rules you specify. For example, see only the keywords that have a CTR below 1%, or those keywords which receive at least 10 clicks.

To start managing your campaigns with the new features available in the new AdWords interface, simply log into your AdWords account. For additional help, please check out the new AdWords interface microsite or new help centre.

We'll continue to add features to the new interface and make additional adjustments until we're confident that the new interface meets the needs of our advertisers. At that point we'll convert all AdWords accounts to use the new interface exclusively, so there will be no switching back to the old interface.

To find out more about the new AdWords interface in an alternative language, check out one of the following microsites: Spanish, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Hebrew.

Posted By Ruth Brennan, Google Team