The standard reports in Google Analytics (GA) are so restricting. What if you want to apply a reusable filter? Or share the report structure with someone without sending along your data? Or measure unique visitors? (Yeah, good luck finding that metric in standard reports.)
Or what about the next time a Google hits, and you need to isolate organic traffic from Google inside the US (since we’re always Goog’s guinea pigs)? Sure, you can use advanced segments, but then you are going a big, soggy lump of sampled data, which is le suck … Pardon my French.
And one more thing that grinds my gears … What if you have an ecommerce site, and you don’t want to have to export two different reports just to get visit data and conversion data? (Up to four if you’re also tracking goals.)
Custom reports allow you to apply filters all day and get the exact metrics you want without a bunch of junk you don’t care about.
Sneak Preview
So how do you create them? Because my goal for this blog is to have content that can be consumed quickly, and this post would be longer, I decided to demonstrate how to create custom reports instead of writing it all out. You’re welcome. :)
What I Forgot To Mention In The Video
You can edit your custom report at any time by clicking the Edit button above it. (It’s snuggling with Advanced Segments and Email.)
Also, you can share your custom report — like on the Custom Report Sharing site — by navigating to Custom Reporting > Overview (in left nav) > Actions (to the right of your report) > Share. When you share your report with someone else, none of your data gets passed, only the structure.
More Information About iOSgate
Okay, fine. No one’s calling it that. But they should. This is highway data robbery going on here. Anyway, here’s a link to the iOS6 post I referenced in the video.
