I don't know about you, but Google Analytics makes my brain hurt - a lot.
If I spend more than 5 minutes doing anything other than looking at my pageviews and wondering if 'bounce rate' really matters (that's as far as my knowledge goes) then I feel overwhelmed by all the stats and click 'X'.
But you see all the stats and figures that can literally monitor and measure everything within a website, aren't technically needed if you are a blogger. Okay, if you are into that then great, but for the general blogger it's fine to only understand the basics.
So wouldn't it be great if you could have a dashboard that only showed the important stuff?
Well whilst doing my nightly search on Pinterest for all things helpful, I call it my blogucation, I came across just that, by wonderful blogger Kate over at Small Paper Things! Yep, she's actually gone and made the most simple and FREE plugin for Google Analytics just for bloggers that places all the good stuff you need to be tracking onto your main dashboard - how clever, right?!
A simpler solution for bloggers
You can find the dashboard/plugin/whatever you want to call it - here and it literally takes seconds to implement on your Google Analytics account; it's as simple as openinga new tab and clicking a drop down menu. I should point out I'm blogging about this because I've never come across anything similar before and I've always hated Google Analytics! Kate also kindly explains what everything on the dashboard means, some of which I didn't know, so I was grateful for that. |
| An example of the blogger-friendly dashboard |
What I love about my new Blogger GA Dashboard
Okay, so all of this stuff isn't new and can be found in the sidebar menu with a bit of digging, but so many times I'd forget where to find certain things. So for that reason I'm loving that Keywords that's headed as 'Content Ideas' is now right there for me and I also kinda' love that I can see instantly see how many people are currently on my blog in real time! Not needed... but so fun!The most helpful thing is knowing what my main traffic sources are, especially as I'm trying to drive more page views/readers to my blog from Pinterest. So I can now monitor my page views from Pinterest every time I click onto my analytics.
Thanks Kate, you're a star!
I really love bloggers like this, that provide such helpful resources - totally free! Because clearly Kate is an online genius and 100% doesn't need a simplistic view of Google Analytics... but she gets it, and is kind enough to come up with a solution! That's why I had to make this impromptu techy blog post as I know a lot of fellow bloggers also don't understand Google Analytics and either just look at pageviews (that was me!) or avoid it entirely. I really think this new dashboard will help me track the things I need to know about and stop my brain from feeling like it will explode from all the stats, finally!I hope you've found this post mildly interesting to read, it was a tad zzzz, but Kimberley's dashboard is a huge help!
Let me know if you decide to get it so we can nod in agreement at how clever it is!
Fee xo.
P.S. I'm trying out my text left align, instead of centered... let me know what you think. It's supposedly easier on the eyes! Humm, I'm not sure yet.
