Analytics Help

In this guide, we'll walk you through how to get from conceptualizing your custom report to actually building it. If this is your first time learning about Custom Reporting, we suggest reading this introduction first to get a good idea of the concepts and terminology involved in this feature.

• Designing your custom report
• Building your custom report
• Viewing your reports

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Designing your custom report

Before building your own custom report, there are a few guidelines to keep in mind. First, it's important to have a general outline of how the data should be presented in your reports. What kind of dimensions do you want to categorize the metrics into? Do you want your reports to only display metrics?

Once you have a general outline drawn, start playing around with the different dimension and metric pieces and create a test report so that you can see how the report will look once it's completed.

The short video below goes through the basics of how to build a custom report, and will give you a better sense of how your final report will look like.

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Building your custom report

Once you've finished viewing the video, you can reference the step-by-step instructions and sample report below as you build a custom report.

The basics
Navigating to the 'Create new custom report' page and naming your reports

1. Log in to your Google Analytics account
2. Select the account you want to create a custom report in
3. Click 'View reports' from any of your profiles. Please note that it doesn't matter which profile you select from. You can access your custom reports from any profile within your account.
4. Select 'Custom Reporting' from the left-hand navigation bar.
5. On the Custom Reporting Overview page, click 'Create new custom report.'
6. Name the report. We suggest you make a simple yet easily identifiable title for your custom report so that you can pick it out from a list quickly.

Dimensions

Dimensions are the categories that the data in your reports fall under. You are limited to selecting five dimensions - one for your top-level table segment, and up to four dimensions to drill down to.

1. Log in to your Google Analytics account.
2. Select the account you want to create a custom report in.
3. Click 'View reports'.
4. Select 'Custom Reporting' from the left-hand navigation bar.
5. On the Custom Reporting Overview page, click 'Create new custom report.'
6. Name the report. We suggest you make a simple yet easily identifiable title for your custom report so that you can pick it out from a list quickly.

Metrics

Unlike dimensions, you can build a report using only metrics. This means you are unrestricted in which metric you choose - on the condition that you don't pair them with dimensions. If both are used, metrics will be subject to the definitions that dimensions define for the pairing. If you want to build a report using both metrics and dimensions, please view this chart first to see which combinations are allowed.

You can drag and drop up to 10 metrics as columns for each tab.

However when they are paired with dimensions, metrics are subject to the definitions that dimensions define for the dimension-metric combinations.

1. Select from a category of metrics: Site Usage, Content, Goals, E-Commerce, and Advertising.
2. Drag and drop each metric into the blue dotted fields labeled 'metric.' To undo this selection, simply click 'X' on the metrics key.
3. You have the option of creating a new tab once you're done organizing your dimensions and metrics. For example, if you wanted to separate the data in the report by cities, you could create new tabs and label them Paris, Tokyo, and so on. The dimensions you picked for your first tab will stick to the same structure across all the tabs. Although you're only allowed to create five tabs per report, you can add different metrics for each tab - which means you can have continual columns of different metrics for one report.
4. Once you've finished, click "Create report."

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Viewing your reports

Once you've completed building your custom report, the data will populate immediately.

The graph is defaulted to plot the first metric you chose for the tab in your custom report. If you'd like to see different metrics, or compare them against each other, please follow these steps:

1. Click the metric pull-down menu from the 'Graph by' feature at the top of your report.
2. Select the metric or metrics you want to graph by. For a full explanation on what "One Metric," "Compare Two Metrics," and "Compare to Site" means visit How do I compare different metrics or date ranges for a single report?

To edit your report after you've saved it, you can always click "Edit this report" right on the report itself, or navigate back to the Overview page and click "Edit" from the list of saved reports.