Let’s get real: we live in a NOW society. We want to check our e-mail now, we want you to text back now, and we want to find out how our traffic is doing now.

Bad news: Google Analytics isn’t in real-time. That means there is a lag between when a user does something on your site and when you see the data in Google Analytics. It’s around two hours but it’s not a fixed time period and sometimes GA falls behind, then catches up, etc. They typically recommend letting data sit for at least 24 hours before considering it “solid.”

But you don’t care about that, you want to know how your day is going so far. Now. Up to the minute. Here’s how you can do that.

Applying It

Last week I showed you how to use a nifty little feature in Google Analytics that lets you compare two different time periods. Today I want to take a closer look at how you can use that tool to reveal some pretty interesting things about your site.

From your dashboard, select today for your date range and then click on the “Compare to Past” checkbox we talked about last week. Now select yesterday or the day you want to compare to. Then hit apply.

Done? Doesn’t look all that special, does it? Well, it may not look like much but there’s some good comparative data there. But you want more, dont’ you? You greedy child of the NOW. So I’m going to give it to you.

Click on Visits right underneath your chart (under Site Usage). Now you’ll see a new button that wasn’t there before that allows you to graph by the hour:

Now you can see how today compared with another day on an hour to hour basis. This is useful if you’re testing things like:

• Posting more often than you usually do
• Posting at different times throughout the day
• If a big blogger linked to you, what kind of impact did it have and when did it start?

Pretty cool, right? And don’t forget that from this view you can select any of the segments you want from the top right (like new visitors, returning visitors, etc.) to get even deeper and more specific into how the day was flowing.

Enjoy! And don’t forget that this data can change if one of the days you’re looking at is today. So I recommend waiting until tomorrow so you can trust your data.

The whole point of this site is to teach bloggers and small-business owners a thing or two about web analytics so they can improve their site and improve their business.

It’s that simple. And while some people may be scared of the numbers or intimidated by them, I’m here to make it a smooth transition. Once you realize the cool things you can do with a little bit of knowledge, I think it becomes easier to put some effort into learning this stuff. Especially if the person teaching it does a good job explaining the details with analogies people can relate to.

Baseball Analogies

I love baseball, so you’re going to hear a lot of baseball analogies on this site. They won’t all be homeruns, but hopefully they’ll help you understand the point I’m trying to get across. After all, I’m sure most of you out there know/like baseball more than you do Analytics.

At least for now.

The latest analogy I’ve been using is the box score: learning to read box scores is incredibly useful because you don’t have to sit and watch every game that’s been played. Taking a look at the box scores gives you a quick look at what happened and who did what at a pretty detailed level.

Web analytics give you that same kind of “recap” of what’s happening on your site.

Anyway, I’m real proud of the analogy so I wrote a guest post discussing it over at LazyManAndMoney called Web Analytics and Perfect Games. For all you hockey fans out there, make sure to check it out—you’ll enjoy seeing how little I know about hockey.

Probably as much as the average person knows about web analytics.

I’m going to try to come up with as many varied analogies as possible, so if you like one or hate one, let me know. Whatever works for you is what I’ll keep doing. Just don’t ask for any hockey analogies…they’ll make me sound like an idiot.

Ever wonder how your traffic is doing this week compared to last week? Or this month compared to last month? Of course you do! That’s the whole reason you installed Google Analytics and are even reading this post: you want to know what your visitors are doing, why they’re doing it, and how they’re changing what they’re doing.

When I first started using Google Analytics, here’s how I compared one time period to another:

First I would select a time period of two weeks (from Sunday to Saturday). Then I would hit the “Graph by” button and change it to “Week.”

The resulting view gave me a quick look at whether I was up or down from last week:

Each one of those two dots represents a week and on the chart you can see that visits were down a little bit.

Other than that, it’s a pretty boring line, isn’t it? Nothing very interesting and it certainly doesn’t answer any interesting questions.

Then I discovered the proper way of looking at this kind of data and I flipped out—I had been doing it wrong and I felt kind of dumb. Here’s the right way of doing it:

First select the time period you want and then click on “Compare to Past:”

Now you’ll see another pair of boxes pop up and your chart will show some green. This is where you select a totally different time period. The result will show both time periods on the same chart with different color lines:

Pretty cool right? Well that’s just the beginning—now you drill down by any metric you want from this view. Want to see how a specific keyword did during the two time periods? Just find the keyword in the Traffic Sources section (or your handy-dandy Dashboard) and voilá.

Not only that, you get to see all the related metrics like bounce rate and time on site for both of the time periods…on the same page!

This is a great way at looking at the data that you think is most important. Whether that’s conversions or visits or anything else, knowing how your key metrics are trending from one time period to the next is crucial.

My last post was all about how great the Google Analytics dashboard is—but one snarky commenter pointed out a tiny snafu on my part: I left out the most useful information from that post.

And that is: if the dashboard is so important, what reports should I show there?

Your wish is my command, Jordie—so let’s dig in and find out.

There are three different ways to think about the reports on your dashboard, and they should give you a good idea of what you want to add there. Each site is different, but these guidelines should help everyone figure out what to add to their dashboard no matter what kind of site you have.

1. Things You Look at a Lot

What’s the first thing you look for when you log into GA? Most people probably just want to take a quick look at their visits. How many people came yesterday or have come today already?

If that sounds like you, congratulations—that’s already what’s on the dashboard. Done.

What do you dig into next? Maybe it’s a look at how your bounce rate is trending or what keywords are driving traffic to your site. Either way, the next time you run this report, simply click “Add to Dashboard” from the top of the page and you’re all done.

Next time you log into GA, you’ll have that report at your fingertips without digging around to get it.

On my Dashboard: Keywords, Top Content, Traffic Sources, and Referring Sites

These are my usual suspects—no surprises here.

2. Things You Don’t Look at Enough

On the other side of the coin, you should also use the dashboard like an alarm clock. You hate it when it goes off but you get really stressed out if it doesn’t. Pick something out you know is important to your site but you seem to neglect quite a bit.

Maybe you don’t think it’s sexy enough or you just don’t understand it all that well. If there is a GA report that scares you or makes you uncomfortable, then that’s one you should add on here.

Seeing it every day will make you more comfortable with it and after a while you may even grow to love it.

On my Dashboard: New vs. Returning, AdSense Overview

Any weird fluctuations here can usually tell you something interesting, like what pages are working to get people to click on AdSense ads and if the mix of returning and new changes for any reason.

3. Something Totally Random

You have to leave the window open for great insights to come out of nowhere and surprise you. Like I’ve said before, analytics is a blend of art and science. And that means you have to leave certain mysterious doors open a crack so that the artsy insight stuff can get in.

So adding something you might think isn’t very important or insightful to your dashboard is a must—even if it’s just one module.

On my Dashboard: Mobile Keywords

As mobile becomes a bigger and bigger slice of the pie, I’m really curious what people are looking for on their phones when they hit my site. After all, surfing on your phone is so slow and cumbersome that when people do finally get to your site, it means a lot more than when they get to your site from their machine at home.
If you’re curious what all of that looks like on my dashboard for The Writer’s Coin, here you go.

And if you have any snarky comments, please share them! I aim to please so fire away!

Driving a car is like running a website: you have to keep track of a lot of things at once in order to get to your destination without crashing and burning.

You have to pay attention to what’s going on outside the car: other cars, jaywalkers, insane cab drivers, the weather, and the occasional deer. All the while, you also have to keep track of what’s happening inside the car: how fast you’re going, how much gas you have left, your mirrors, your windshield wipers, and you have to absolutely make sure no Yanni accidentally plays on the radio (trust me—road rage will ensue).

You have a lot of things to process and not a lot of time to do it in. And that’s why the dashboard is so important—dashboards process a lot of essential information and spit it out in really easy-to-read gauges, lights, and buttons. Everything you need to know about your car is displayed right there on the dashboard from the comfort of your comfy, heated leather seat.

A GA dashboard report

Same goes with your website—and the Google Analytics dashboard works the same way. In Google Analytics, the dashboard report serves as your summary of all the important numbers that tell you if your site is going in the right direction. When you log into your Analytics account, it’s the first page you see with actual data on it. The great thing about the Google Analytics dashboard is that your dashboard could be (and should be) completely different from my dashboard because we have completely different websites.

Everyone’s Dashboard is Different

Different sites serve different purposes and that means you need to pay attention to different numbers. If your site requires users to log in to access certain information, then expect the bounce rate to be a lot lower. If you have a terrible interface on your site you may have a higher time on site, which in this case is a bad thing.

The point is that every site is different and so should every dashboard report.

Under the Hood

While dashboard reports are a great way to keep track of what’s going on under the hood on a day-to-day basis, it’s not enough. Every so often, you’ll have to get your hands dirty and take a look under the hood.

That means going deeper into the reports in GA and looking for potential problems or nuggets of wisdom. Sometimes you’ll discover something great and unexpected (like a book review getting massive SEO traffic) and sometimes you’ll find things that are broken and need fixing.

I don’t want to overwhelm you with stuff, so I will write a follow-up post on how to actually use the dashboard, what and how to add and remove things from it, etc.

I know this can be intimidating and scary, but you have to trust me on this—there are some fascinating things happening on your site. And digging into your analytics is one of the best ways of discovering them. Don’t worry, I’ll be here to help you along the way!

Image by wOOkie