Google Analytics launches customizable Dashboards

Google Analytics has launched Dashboards, giving businesses a new way to bring their most important KPIs and visualizations together on a single customizable report.

Building reports is now drag-and-drop. Dashboards use a grid-based canvas where users can manually position, resize and align visualizations.

Users can drag dimensions and metrics directly onto the canvas to create and customize charts, rather than building each report separately.

Dashboards can also be published directly to the Reports left navigation without going through the Google Analytics library.

Six visualization types are available at launch. Google supports scorecards for high-level KPIs, tables for detailed reporting, line charts for trends over time, bar charts for comparisons, donut charts for breakdowns and funnel charts for monitoring conversion steps and drop-offs.

Scorecards can also display percentage changes when date comparisons are applied, while line charts support daily, weekly and monthly views.

Published dashboards can be viewed across the property. Users need an Editor or Administrator role to create and publish a dashboard.

Once published, however, anyone with access to the Google Analytics property can view it through the Reports navigation.

There are limits on how much you can build. Standard Google Analytics properties can include up to 15 cards per dashboard, while premium properties support up to 30.

Published dashboards are shared across the property rather than privately with individual users.

API support, segments and card-level comparisons are also not currently supported.

Why we care. Marketers can consolidate reporting inside GA. Instead of jumping between multiple reports to monitor performance, businesses can build a single-page view of the metrics that matter most to them.

That could make routine performance monitoring faster, particularly for teams tracking KPIs across different parts of the business.

Google is making Analytics reporting more customizable. The launch brings more of the dashboard-building workflow directly into Google Analytics, allowing teams to turn their existing Analytics data into purpose-built views without constantly navigating between separate reports.

Bottom line. Google Analytics Dashboards give businesses a centralized, drag-and-drop workspace for turning their most important metrics into customized performance reports directly inside GA.