The vast majority of common Google Analytics functions are available for use through the basic dashboard. Below is an outline of these features.
To get the most from the dashboard, it is recommended that your set a segment to filter by. For details on how to do this please see the Select a Segment guide. This article also explains changing date ranges for your data, should that also be of interest.
1. Unique pageviews by page
This widget shows the top 10 pages for your selected segment by the number of unique pageviews it has received during the specified time period. This is your go-to source for discovering which pages are getting the most hits.
Please note that the way this widget
takes information, it shows all the pages visited by a user who has
visited one of your school pages. If a user lands on your home page and
then at some point during their session navigates to the main Kent home
page or the student home page, these will also show on this widget.
Therefore you should not look at a sum of all entries to be
representative of an "overall visitors" figure.
Extra information is available to the adventurous - clicking on the blue link on the title will take you to a full analytics report where you can see things such as number of visitors to a page, by day, over your selected date range. To learn more about these advanced features, please sign up for one of our many Google Analytics workshops we run across the year, details of which can be found over at the workshops page.
2. Sessions by source
This widget shows the top 10 sources that drive traffic to your website. Each of the entries represents a page on which a user has clicked a link that has lead them to one of your pages.
These results include visitors that
have come via search engines such as Google and Yahoo, 3rd party
websites which are referring users to your site including Twitter and
Facebook, and ‘direct’ traffic where users go straight to your URL via a
bookmark or typed in address. Any campaigns that have been set up using
Google Tracking URLs will also display here for ease of review - please
see the tracking links page if you would like more information on Google tracking links.
Where you can see "Source/Medium" as the header of the left column, this describes the source i.e. the literal page where the link to your site was clicked and then on the right hand side of the slash, the medium, which describes the type of link such as "organic" for coming through on a search engine's results, or "referral" for a click through from another site or blog.
3. Sessions by social network
The Sessions by Social Network widget depicts the number of sessions that have been generated on your pages through click-throughs from various social networks.
Although only Twitter and Facebook are
shown above, click-throughs from LinkedIn, Tumblr, Google+ and many
other social media sources such as URL shortening websites will be shown
here if you have had traffic from them. Additionally, hovering over
individual bars will display precise figures, as seen above.
To understand this data correctly it is important to note that what you are presented with is not limited to official posts from University of Kent social media sources. If a student simply links one of your pages on Facebook, for instance, this will show under the Facebook category. If you are interested in gaining a more thorough view of returns from your social media activity, we recommend you visit the Google Tracking Links page.
4. Sessions by country
The fourth and final widget on the basic dashboard does exactly what the title says, providing a breakdown of visitors based on their geographical location at the time of accessing your page. This can be particularly useful if you have recently set up campaigns abroad or are targetting a new market.
Greater information can be gained by
cross referencing this information with statistics produced from
campaign tracking links. For more information on using tracking links,
please see the widgets above or view the relevant page for how to set them up.
As with many of the widgets, clicking on the blue title-link will give you a wider view and alternative graphical displays of this information, with the option of viewing difference over time. If you would like to learn more about these kind of advanced features, please keep an eye out for the next of our Google Analytics workshops which are run on a regular basis.