Google Analytics Template App by Curbal

In this article, I will show you how to install, configure and use my Google Analytics Template, that you can get for free on the AppSource store at Microsoft.

Read before using the report!

1. Note 1: This report uses Power BI native connector for Google Analytics. If you are having sampling issues when you connect to Google Analytics with the connector, the same sampling problems will appear on this report too. To try to minimize the issue, select a smaller date range using the date parameters. 

1. Note 2: This report cleans the sessions that are invalid due to referrer spam issues. You can review the sessions that have been removed by looking at the referrer spam file used. This will cause that the sessions viewed in Google Analytics will not match the ones on this report. Link to the resource in n Github here.

Ok, with that out of the way, lets walk-through how to install the App and configure it.

Purchase the template app

If you tested the Template app and you want to personalize it, or you are using Report Server and you can’t install it, you can buy the report here:

Back to how to install the app…

You can get the app here or by clicking the image below:

How to configure and Install the App

Watch this video, if you prefer a visual guide or continue reading:

Once you have downloaded the app form the AppSource, all you need to do it is to click on it to install it.

Once you click on it you will be presented with the following options:

• Connect: You authenticate yourself with Google Analytics and you load your data to start visualizing it.
• Explore app: you don’t connect with your data, instead, you explore the app with sample data.
• Edit Workspace: You install the workspace on your power bi tenant and build a new report based on the data.

Contents

1. Parameters
2. User Page
3. Acquisition Page
4. Content Page
5. Site Speed Page
6. Site Search Page
7. Lead generation Page
8. Feedback
9. Release Notes

Connect your data with the App

If you decide to connect your data with the app, you will be ask to authenticate yourself and data from your own google analytics account will be loaded into the app.

Only you will have access to the data, the app owner (in this case me), will not be able to see or access it.

Before you can connect to the service, in this case google analytics, you will be asked to enter the following Parameters:

All parameters are mandatory and will be used to properly generate the report.

1. Start Date: The first date of the date range you want to load. (DD-MM-YYYY)
2. Finish Date: The last date of your date range. If you want the app to update on future dates, then pick a date in the future. (DD-MM-YYYY)
3. Account ID: Enter Google Analytics Account ID. More details on the video below.
4. PropertyID: Enter Google Analytics Account ID. More details on the video below.
5. ViewID: Enter Google Analytics Account ID. More details on the video below.
6. Language: Here you can specify the regional settings, so the Month Name and the Day Name will be in your local language. You can find all language codes here.
7. StartWeekDay: Does the week start by Sunday or Monday? Use 1 for Sundays and 2 for Mondays.
8. WebsiteName: Here you specify the name of your website. For example, if the URL for your website is: www. curbal-blog.se, then the name to enter here is: curbal-blog
   Note: This is used to create a link to the pages on your site, if you enter this wrong, you wont be able to navigate to your pages.
9. Domain: Here you specify the domain of your website. For example, if the URL for your website is: www. curbal-blog.se, then the name to enter here is: se (without the dot).
   Note: This is used to create a link to the pages on your site, if you enter this wrong, you wont be able to navigate to your pages.
10. ContacPage: You need to provide the Google Analytics title of your contact page (see video on how to do that).

And if you entered of all the parameters successfully, then you will be asked to sign in to google analytics and the app will be generated with your data.

Guide to the app

In the remaining part of the article, I am going to show you how page by page how to use the reports, and which insights you can gain when you use it.

Lets start with the user’s tab or page:

Users Page/Tab

The users Page is meant to give you a better and deeper understanding of who your audience is: where they come from, when they access your site and if they are new or returning visitors.

The metrics used for creating this Page are:

1. Users: The total number of people of people that visited your site in the time period selected.
2. Returning Users: People that have visited your site previously
3. New Users: First time users of your site.
   Note: If a returning user clean their cookies, they will be considered as new users.
4. Sessions: Number of visits to your site. One user can visit your site multiple times.

Watch this video to get a walk-trough of the page functionality:

Acquisition Page

In the acquisition page you can learn how your visitors find your website and which traffic sources perform best as well as monitor them.

The fields your will see on the page are:

1. Default channel grouping = Google classifies channel sources in different buckets so you can easier make sense of your data.
   They are:
   Organic Traffic: Traffic coming from search engines
   Direct Traffic: Traffic that goes directly to your site (no middle steps)
   Social Traffic: Traffic from social Networks
   Email Traffic: Traffic from Email (ex. campaigns)
   Paid Traffic: Traffic from paid sources, ex. AdWords
   Display Traffic: Also traffic from paid sources, in this case the display network.
   Other Traffic: Traffic from all other sources not specified above.
2. Full Referrer = The full link (including domain) or URL of the source page that sent you the traffic.
3. Referrer = If someone puts a link to your site in their site, you will find it here. (Note: it is called Referral Path in google analytics)
4. Referral = This is a custom grouping made in Power BI to group the sources more
5. Avg Pages/ session = This is the average number of pages viewed during a session. It includes repeating views of the same page. In google analytics is called Pages/ session.
6. Avg Time on page: This measures the average time your visitors spent on your page. If the user visits only one page on your site, this metric can not be calculated.

Watch this video to get a walk-trough of the page functionality:

Content Page

In this page you will be able to see and follow how your websites are performing.

The fields use are:

1. Page title = This is the title of your page
2. Page URL = The link to the page, in case you need to review it
3. Page Category = This is a custom category made in Power BI as follows:
   if the contact page has the following structure: example.com/contact, then visits to this page will be classified as Contact
   if the blog pages have the following structure: example.com/blog then visits to the blog pages will be classified as Blog
   the rest of the pages will be classified as Business.
4. Pages viewed = Number of pageviews for your page. This field is called pageviews in google analytics
5. Viewed only one page = This measures the percentage of users that viewed only one page and left the site. In google analytics is called Bounce Rate
6. Left your site here = This measure the percentage of users that left your site when visiting the page. In google analytics is called Exit Page
7. Avg Pages/ session = This is the average number of pages viewed during a session. It includes repeating views of the same page. In google analytics is called Pages/ session.
8. Avg Time on page: This measures the average time your visitors spent on your page. If the user visits only one page on your site, this metric can not be calculated.

Watch this video to get a walk-trough of the page functionality:

Site Speed Page

In this page you will be able to measure how fast your website loads. Google has indicated that site speed is one of the things used by the algorithm to rank pages and they recommend to keep it under 3 seconds.

Now, how is your site performing? Let’s take a look in this report.

Before jumping in the video, let me clarify some of the metrics here:

1. Avg Page Load (sec) = The average amount of time (in seconds) it takes that page to load, from initiation of the pageview (e.g., click on a page link) to load completion in the browser. It consists of two components: 1) network and server time, and 2) browser time. It is the median not the average to protect against outliers.
2. No of pages = The number of pageviews that were sampled to calculate the average page-load time.
3. Avg Doc Interactive Time (sec) = Time it takes for the user to start interacting with the site.
4. Avg Redirection Time (sec) = The time spent in redirection before fetching the page. If there are no redirects, the value for this metric is expected to be 0.
5. Avg Domain Lookup (sec) = Time it takes to lookup the domain name of the site.
6. Avg Page Download (sec) = Time it takes for the browser to download the page from the server, prior to rendering. (Network and server time is not included)
7. Avg Server Connection (sec) = The time needed for the user to connect to your server.
8. Avg Server Response (sec) = The time for your server to respond to a user request, including the network time from the user’s location to your server.

Watch this video to get a walk-trough of the page functionality:

Site Search Page

The site search Page collects and measures what your visitors are searching for in your site. This can help you understand what interest your users, understand if they find it and if they don’t will give you ideas on what needs to be changed on your site and what new content you can create to meet that demand.

The fields used here are:

1. Search Term = The text the users wrote on the search box on your site.
2. Searches = The number of unique searches for a search term, so if a term was searched multiple times on the same session, it will only be counted once. In google analytics this field is called Total Unique Searches.
3. Started their search here = The page the users where on when they started searching on your site. In google analytics this field is called Start Page.
4. Landed after search = The page users visited after doing a search (does not include the page results page). In google analytics this field is called Search Destination Page.
5. Search result pages viewed = The number of pages viewed from the search results pages. In google analytics this field is called Results Pageviews / Search.
6. Search refinements = The percentage number time a user refine its search term, meaning it searches a second time to get better search results. In google analytics this field is called % Search Refinements.
7. Avg time spent on site after search = Average time spent on the site after doing an internal search. In google analytics this field is called Time After Search.
8. Avg pages viewed after search = The number of page users viewed on your site as a result of an internal search. In google analytics this field is called Avg Search Depth.

Watch this video to get a walk-trough of the page functionality:

Lead Gen Page

The lead generation pages will help you identify which companies are looking at your data and what are they searching for, so you can then call them and sell your services.
*IMPORTANT= For this report to show any relevant data, you need to configure the Contact Page Parameter

1. The main fields used in this report are:
   Network Domain: It extracts the domain name from the visitor’s IP, if available.
2. Search Provider: It shows the name of the internet provider
3. Page title = This is the title of your page
4. Company Name= Is a custom column that concatenates Network Domain and Search Provider and filters out the most common Internet provider suppliers.

Give Feedback!

Are you using the app and have issues or suggestions? Or you want to use it but something is missing or wrong? In that case, let me know about it here so I can improve it. 🙂

Release Notes

Release Date	Released version	Notes
2019-09-20	1.0	First release of the app.
2019-11-30	–	Delisted from the AppSource due to issues with the Google Analytics connector.
2020-01-0x	2.0	1. App listed back on AppSource 2. Removed Goals from Parameters due to issues when loading the data 3. Added Lead Generation Page