Great job! You’ve added Google Analytics to your site, or perhaps finally found the right person to give you access to the existing analytics. Now you’re ready to dig in…. right?

With the sheer volume of data and reports that frequently change, getting past the All Pages report can sometimes feel daunting. While we encourage you to really dig into your set up and utilize things like goals, events, site search, AdWords, SEO and campaign tracking, a simple dashboard is a great place to get started.

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We use a dashboard called the Top Pages dashboard. It’s a compilation of some of the most important data in Google Analytics. Keep in mind, dashboards aren’t there to answer all of your questions – they’re there to help you ask the right ones. Look at dashboards as a jumping off point to spot abnormal activity you can then dig into the reporting to better understand. And just like that, you’re off and running with analytics!

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The Top Pages dashboard starts with a widget with the number of sessions. This is one of the most basic metrics in GA, telling you the number of times someone came to your site. While this number alone is not going to change your marketing strategy, it’s critical to understanding just about all of your reports. Keep it in mind as you look through the rest of the dashboard.

Ah, the Top Pages widget. The widget from which the dashboard takes its name. The list of the most popular pages on your website by Pageviews and Unique Pageviews is great for showing where users from those sessions are going. These pages should be in top shape with compelling content.

Top Sections shows you which sections, based on your URL structure, are performing best on your site by both Pageviews and Unique Pageviews. Play with the page path level to get this to display the most relevant data for your website.

The Top Landing Pages widget shows the pages people enter your site through. These are the first pages of each session. The Bounce Rate is included here as well. A bounce is when someone comes to your site and doesn’t visit any additional pages, but leaves from the page they entered. A high bounce rate is typically not a good thing because it indicates that users are not engaged with your content. However, there are plenty of cases in which a high bounce rate might be good – for example, if you are trying to drive users to request information on an offsite form. When users click the call-to-action, they are actually leaving your website, but still doing the thing you want them to do.

This widget is here for you to customize. There is usually at least one section of the site you’d like broken down. Admissions is popular in higher education. This example is from our website, and we’re looking more closely at the service pages. Just click on the little pencil icon (when you hover over the icon, it will show up in the top right corner) and edit it to show the most valuable section of your site.

One of the greatest sets of reports for marketers in Google Analytics is the traffic source reports. In the Top Pages dashboard, we have a Default Channel Grouping widget that shows where traffic is coming from at the highest level. We also include the Source/Medium to give you more detail. These reports work pretty well, even if you are not doing any campaign tracking or tagging. Google always looks at referral information for each session, however if you do start campaign tracking your emails, social media, advertising, rss feeds, etc., you will see this section of the dashboard come alive.

Google Analytics gives us a good idea of where our visitors are coming from. The Top Pages report provides Country, Region (state) and Metro reports. We prefer Metro to City because it groups suburbs together in one line item, which makes analysis easier. Compare this data with your regional goals and recruitment efforts.

Finally, it’s important to monitor the devices users are using to access your website. Though it goes without saying, your site needs to be mobile friendly. This data can help you make the case for mobile.

We hope you’re taking full advantage of all Google Analytics can provide. But if you do nothing else, download the Top Pages dashboard and schedule it to be delivered daily. Keep a close eye on these numbers and let them be a guide for digging into your data.

Can’t get enough Google Analytics – or is that just us? Either way, check out this infographic on the History of Google Analytics.