There is a little known hidden feature buried deep inside Google Analytics that is a goldmine of actionable ideas & insights.

If you are like most small website owners you probably use Google Analytics every now and then, poking about in random sections & looking at the graphs to give you anecdotal indicators about your users or trends. Did you know there is a mobile app too?

Most of use are not really scratching the surface with Google Analytics, let alone mastering it & using it for all it’s worth! Most of us honestly just don’t have (or make) the time needed to become a Google Analytics ninja.

Fortunately someone else has done all the hard work & with just a few clicks you can fill your Google Analytics account with useful reports & even an executive dashboard to tell you exactly how your site is doing. Just tell me how I hear you asking, well follow these easy steps…..

Login to your Google Analytics account now, click “Customization” (Google uses USA English spelling as you can see), then “Import from Gallery”.

The Google Analytics Solutions Gallery should be on screen now, there are lots of good ones to play with but we will try out “Occam’s Razor Awesomeness”, go ahead and click import.

On the shared reports permissions page, choose which site you want to import the reports into, as you can see I’m applying this to the vigus.eu view.

Once you’ve clicked create you will find a selection of new reports to play with in your Google Analytics account.

You will also find a fancy new executive dashboard.

Another little gem that’s often left unused is the custom alerts function which can send you an email or text message based on defined criteria, such as an increase in 404 errors, or a % drop in traffic over a period of time.

So now you know how to supercharge your Google Anayltics use by creating custom reports, executive dashboards & alerts. It’s easier than you thought and can be setup in just a few minutes – enjoy!