Custom Reporting -- Module 3

For this custom report, I selected what I consider to be some of the most important metrics for any website, including:

Unique Page-views – The number of visits in which the specified page(s) are viewed at least once.

Bounce Rate (our BFF) – The % of single-page views. Although this may not be as applicable on our blogs because they’re simple, (and we often link direct to the article from BB), it is still useful in other ways, as I’ll show further down this post.

Visit Duration – How long was the user session?

Unique Visitors – The number of unduplicated visitors to the blog.

Average Time on Page – The average time a user spends viewing a page(s).

As you can see from the screenshot, I also added some drill-down metrics which can be useful to a web designer, or an uber-nerd such as myself, including:

What browser you’re using?

On which OS?

I can than tell what the majority of my “users,” view my blog in – and in this case, it’s looking like Safari. I can then made modifications to the HTML to suit this browser, or even slap Apple logos all over it to appease my legions of Apple-based readers. ;-)

I can also see things like browser/user specific bounce rate, as well as the average time spent on the blog or within pages.

Overall, I think these metrics could be useful, mostly because these blogs are personal, and we aren’t trying to push them to the masses through Google, or some other medium – they’re simply for our own informational purposes.

Certain metrics and drill-downs like the OS and platform could also help me troubleshoot issues with my blog, should any arise for my users.