Every so often i like to re-assess how i setup my Google Analytics dashboard and what information i should be concentrating on. After all analytics can be a mind-grenade at times!!

It should be noted i setup and track differently depending on the client and sector but in almost all cases there are levels or types of common information i want to know. For example every campaign has a focus on achieving an ROI or conversions for clients but what do we know about those conversions. Surely there would be a great deal of value in having a deeper understanding of your clients conversions and having quick access to it.

The dashboard in analytics is great because it allows you to add reports that you use regularly to it. Adding the right reports at the right detail can save you a great deal of energy and time. This is why i recently went back and looked at what i had on my dashboards and looked again at how i segmented conversions. I came up with some ideas but some of the more basic conversion segmentation approaches are well highlighted in the Art of SEO. Thats a book by the way and well worth the read. You can get it from my affiliate link below, wink wink. In there book they looked at segmenting conversions in the following ways:

Conversion By Keyword:
Pretty logical. This is something that i look at regularly and is crucial to every seo campaign. This is because you want to see whether the terms you are targeting are bringing any value (conversions).

Conversion By Web Page:
This is going to be more valuable with certain types of sites. The information gained from this might highlight the need for some split testing or a design change.

Conversion By Referrer:
You might want to see which referrer is generating the most conversions. This might be a link on a particular page or an advertisement. If its converting well you might want to consider more coverage or target similar sites. It also gives you a deeper insight into the value of your link building campaigns.

Conversions By Landing Page and keyword:
Ok so this is going into even more detail. You will know which keyword for which page is converting best. If a keyword that is performing the best is at the end of your title tag on a page you might want to try moving it to the front. This might give you an increase in rankings for that term.

Conversions By Initial Entry Page:
Every user most go through a process to achieve a conversion. Whether this is read an informational page and then proceed to a signup page or going from a product page to a shopping cart. The level of conversion can be effected significantly by the approach and language used on that page. You have to appeal to the individual user and persuade them to move on to the next step. If you are finding one entry page is working better than the other look at the language and layout of that page.

Ok, so these are pretty obvious ones that we probably all use to some degree or another but there are plenty of others too. It’s sometimes nice however to go back and look at the basics and understand why we do things. Of course once you have this information at hand you can start looking at how to improve conversions.