Automotive Dashboards and Website Metrics That Matter – DealerSocket

September 14, 2016

So you have installed Google Analytics on your site or have been granted access to an account. Great! But what do you do now?

Google Analytics puts a great deal of information at your fingertips, but this can be extremely overwhelming. One way to manage it is to set up Dashboards.

Dashboards allow you to visualize and create custom reports of the information that is most valuable to you and your business. You can even customize your reports to send to other key stakeholders. Each Dashboard can include up to 12 different widgets.

When setting up a Dashboard, first decide on your goals and objectives. This can range from general website stats to more specific metrics such as paid search or content performance.

When you log in and navigate to the reporting tab, you will find the Dashboard option at the top of the left-hand navigation bar. By default, you will have one labeled, “My Dashboard” that is set to private. Any new Dashboard that is created will only be available to the email login that it was created under but can be made public for anyone that has access to the Google Analytics account. This Dashboard includes the default metrics and widgets that Google Analytics offers. Some basic metrics shown in this section include: New Users, Users, Sessions, Average Session Duration, Pages/Session, etc. You can use that one, add to it, or create a brand new dashboard from scratch.

 

To create a new Dashboard, select “New Dashboard” and blank canvas.

 

From that point, there are several different widgets that can be added, including:

  • Metric — A basic numeric value, such as number of sessions, pages per session, or goal completions
  • Timeline — A graph of a selected metric that is plotted over a period of time
  • Geomap — A map with the selected metric plotted
  • Table — Multiple metrics in a table format
  • Pie Chart — A pie chart of information such as what percent of different sources (organic, direct, paid, etc.) drive total traffic
  • Bar Chart — A bar chart of a single metric with up to two dimensions

 

There are additional options available for filtering. For example, to see a quick drop down of vehicle detail page views, apply the following filter:

 

When creating a Dashboard for your dealership, some metrics you should consider, outside of the general stats like sessions and users, include:

  • Top 10 vehicle detail page views — See which vehicles get the most views during a designated period of time (see screenshot above)
  • Top new SRP page views — See which new vehicle brands get the most views
  • Top referral paths — See how your third parties are performing
  • Top blog landing page views — See traffic to your top blog posts
  • Top landing page views — See traffic to your top landing pages
  • Traffic by channel — See where your mix of traffic is coming from (organic, email, PPC, etc.)
  • Top organic keywords — By linking your Google Search Console account to your Google Analytics account, you can get more visibility into keywords in Google search
  • Paid search traffic – By linking your Google AdWords account to your Google Analytics account, you can pull specific campaign metrics to see how they are performing

Additionally, as you browse information in Google Analytics, you can add any view directly from that page into your created Dashboard.

Once you have created a Dashboard of relevant information, you can share, export, and email the information. First, make sure that the date range is correct; it is easily adjustable from the top-right corner of your screen. From there, you can select:

  • Share Object — Share a copy of the dashboard to any email that has at least view access to the account
  • Share Template Link — Create a shareable link that allows the same template to be applied to another account (without carrying over the data from the original account)
  • Share in Solutions Gallery — Share the template (no data) with the public in Google’s solution gallery
  • Email — Email the Dashboard and adjust the frequency it is sent out, the day of the week, and duration
  • Export — Export the report to PDF

While there are countless ways to use Google Analytics to measure your KPIs, setting up these basic Dashboards is a great start. Of course, we at DealerSocket include Google Analytics access and analysis with our DealerFire websites and digital marketing solutions. We are happy to help you along in your data journey.

To learn more about DealerSocket’s website and digital marketing solutions, visit dealersocket.com/automotive-websites-and-digital-marketing.


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