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A GA dashboard can help your dealership measure digital marketing efforts.
You know dashboards. They’re the first thing you see when you drive, and they’re the first priority for wiping down, so that they stay gleaming during test drives. But the GA dashboard we’re talking about today isn’t on four wheels, it’s online in Google Analytics. If you’ve spent any amount of time in Google Analytics, you know the overwhelming feeling of not knowing where to begin. Even if you’re a Google Analytics whiz, it can be daunting to find all the data to make informed digital marketing decisions.
Creating a custom GA dashboard has numerous benefits for dealerships. You spend a lot of money on dealership marketing and improving sales. Don’t you want to know the ROI of your lead generation efforts?
GA dashboards help you pull all the relevant data out of Google Analytics onto one screen. A custom dashboard can save you from digging around Google Analytics when your time is better spent using the data to improve traffic and sales.
If you have new hires on your digital dealership team, a custom GA dashboard can save you hours of training time.
There is hidden benefit to creating a custom GA dashboard, too. The process forces you to think about the metrics that matter most to your dealership. This can be an eye-opening experience for some dealership digital marketers.
How to Create a GA Dashboard
Creating a custom GA dashboard is easy. To start, you’ll need a Google Analytics account you use to track your website.
Once you’re in your account on the left sidebar, below the search box, you’ll see the dashboards section.
Click the “new dashboard” link. You’ll be prompted to name your dashboard and either create a dashboard from a blank canvas or use a starter dashboard. Starter dashboards are fun to check out. You can see how other people create their GA dashboards, and get inspiration for your own dashboard.
Before you create your dashboard, check out the some of the dashboard widgets we recommend, below.
What Metrics Should your Dealership Track?
You can customize your GA dashboard however you like. Below are list widgets we think dealership digital teams will want to try.
1. Unique Visitors to Your Site
This is a great general stat to have for your dealership’s site that tells you how many individual users /potential customers are visiting your site. Having this number can help you determine your overall site conversion rate.
2. The Most & Least Visited Pages on Your Site
It’s handy to see which pages on your site get the most traffic. For dealerships, this could be the pages with car listings. Below are two screenshots that show you how to create your own most and least visited pages. Only want to see car listings? Use the filter section in the widget setup to only show pages containing a car listing.
To create the least visited pages widget, clone the most visited widget from above and click the sorting arrow to point down.
3. Health of Acquisition Channels
If you’d like to see a pie graph of where your visitors are coming from, use this widget.
4. Any and All Conversions
This will be difficult for your dealership to implement if you don’t have GA conversions set up on your site.
Once you do, you can easily keep track of how many people filled out your contact form, subscribed to your email newsletter or even download a pdf from your website.
5. SEO Widgets
There are many widgets you can create for SEO. Here are some of our favorites.
- Show Organic Non-brand Visits (& not provided)
This is a great widget because it shows all non-brand organic search visits and it’s including the “not provided” list. You can now clearly see how your SEO optimization is doing without the distraction of brand keyword phrases for people who already know who you are. This shows you new customers who have arrived via search.
- Most Successful Keywords by Goal
If you have conversions setup, use this widget to help you discover which organic keywords convert best for you.
6. User Engagement
If you want to learn how web visitors interact with your website, use these following widgets in your GA dashboard.
- Average Time on Page and Bounce Rate by Page Title
This widget is great for showing you which pages on your website visitors spend the most time on. It also shows you how quickly they left the page / their “bounce rate”. What you might find most handy is that the widget uses page titles so you can quickly see your most engaging pieces of content.
- Pages People Leave From
This widget allows you to see the top pages that people exit your website from. This is useful for determining where you’re losing people in your conversion funnel.
- Most Engaged Traffic Sources
This widget is straightforward. It lists the sources of traffic based on how many pages per session were visited.
We hope you enjoyed this quick tutorial and use these widget examples as a springboard for your custom GA dashboard.
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