The Google Analytics new version is available to all users in most major languages. After you sign into the account, you will notice a link to the latest version at top right corner of your account page. A host of new features have been made available to help users for a better and more insightful analysis of the data.

Create in your account an additional dashboard

For most analytics users, the first thing that they see while viewing the reports is the dashboard. One in the new version has been redesigned to be totally widget-based and more than that, highly customizable. The four types of widgets are: Metric, Timeline, Table and Pie Chart. This will give you the ability to select the visualization, which best suits the piece of information you want in a dashboard. It employs a three-column layout. You can also customize it (the layout) through drag and drop of the widgets as you would like.

Here is a brief explanation on the four types of widgets for users:

1. Metric – This widget will show a metric’s value and also a sparkline of that particular metric over the chosen time period
2. Pie Chart – This widget is best suited to display breakdowns of a particular metric on basis of a certain dimension. For example, Visits by Browser Type!
3. Timeline: This widget is a graph of any given metric over a period of time. You can compare in the same graph two different metrics.
4. Table – Think of this widget as a peculiar mini-custom report. One dimension can be shown with two metrics & up to about 10 rows of data in a table.

A precursor to multiple dashboards

A common refrain from Google Analytics has been about lack of multiple dashboards as a single platform is not enough. They have been looking for the capability of customizing multiple dashboards for varied analyses. This lacuna has been done away with the new analytics platform, which imparts the power for creating multiple custom dashboards, well up to 20 per unique profile. You may begin with an overall ‘Company KPIs’ Dashboard. It will include your company’s most vital performance indicators, create a specific ‘search engine optimization’ Dashboard for your SEO efforts, plus a ‘Content’ Dashboard, which largely centers around your website’s content.

The new dashboard’s core functionality is all ready for people to use, as part of the new Google Analytics version. For starters, some of the features from the existing dashboard still need to be brought over like the ability to share, email as well as export a dashboard. Google Analytics team is working on them and also working towards some user-friendly improvements.

Just similar to the Google Analytics previous version, users can make a custom report simply by picking the metrics and specific dimensions that they want.