How to Create a Small Business Dashboard in Google Analytics
Wading through Google Analytics 4 can feel like trying to find a needle in a digital haystack. You have mountains of data about your website visitors, but turning that data into clear, actionable insights for your small business feels like a full-time job. This guide will show you how to cut through the noise by building a simple, customized dashboard directly within Google Analytics so you can see the metrics that matter most in just a few clicks.
Why Your Small Business Needs a Simple Dashboard
Opening Google Analytics to a sea of reports and jargon is enough to intimidate anyone. A dashboard cleans up the clutter. It's a single screen that cherry-picks the most important key performance indicators (KPIs) and presents them in an easy-to-understand format. For a busy small business owner, this is invaluable.
Instead of manually digging through different reports every week, your dashboard gives you a quick snapshot of your business's health. It helps you:
Save Time: Get the answers you need in 60 seconds instead of 30 minutes.
Spot Trends Quickly: Instantly see if traffic is up, sales are down, or if a new marketing campaign is actually working.
Make Data-Informed Decisions: Stop guessing and start making choices based on what your customers are really doing.
Focus on What Moves the Needle: Keep your attention on the metrics directly tied to your growth, not vanity metrics that don’t impact the bottom line.
First Things First: Choosing the Right KPIs
A dashboard is only as good as the metrics it displays. Before you build anything, you need to decide what information is genuinely important for your business. The best way to do this is to tie your KPIs directly to your business goals.
The metrics an e-commerce store needs are different from a local service business. Here are a few examples to get you started:
If Your Goal is Generating Leads (e.g., contact form submissions):
Conversions: How many people completed your contact form or signed up for your newsletter? This is your most important metric.
Users: How many unique individuals are visiting your site?
Traffic Acquisition: Where is your traffic coming from (e.g., Organic Search, Paid Social, Email)? This tells you which marketing channels are working.
Top Landing Pages: Which pages are bringing in the most visitors? This helps you understand what content resonates with your audience.
If Your Goal is E-commerce Sales:
Total Revenue: The ultimate measure of success for any online store.
E-commerce Conversion Rate: What percentage of visitors make a purchase?
Average Purchase Value: How much are customers spending per order?
Traffic Acquisition by Revenue: Which channels (like Facebook Ads or Google Search) are driving the most sales, not just clicks?
If Your Goal is Content and Brand Awareness:
Users & New Users: Are you attracting a new audience and is it growing over time?
Engaged Sessions: How many sessions involved real engagement (lasted longer than 10 seconds, had a conversion, or had 2+ pageviews)? This is a better metric than the old "Bounce Rate."
Views by Page: What are your most popular blog posts or pages?
Traffic Acquisition: Where are readers discovering your content?
Pick the 4-6 most critical metrics for your specific goals. Don't try to track everything. The beauty of a dashboard is its simplicity and focus.
Building Your Dashboard in Google Analytics 4 (Step-by-Step)
In Google Analytics 4, you can create a pseudo-dashboard by creating a customized "Collection" of reports in the left-hand navigation. This acts as your one-stop shop for your most important data. Here’s how to set it up.
Step 1: Navigate to the Reports Library
The "Library" is where all the reporting magic happens. It’s a space where you can manage, create, and organize the reports that appear in your main navigation.
In the left-hand navigation menu of Google Analytics, click on Reports.
At the very bottom of that menu, click on Library.
You'll see a section for "Collections" and "Reports." Collections are like folders that group similar reports together. We're going to create our own collection to serve as our dashboard.
Step 2: Create a New Collection
At the top of the Library page, click the + Create new collection button.
From the options that appear, select the Blank template.
Give your new collection a name. Something clear and simple like "Business Dashboard" or "Company Overview" works well.
Under "Topics," click to create a new topic and name it something like "At a Glance." This will be the heading for your reports section.
Click Apply.
You now have an empty folder for your custom dashboard. The left side of the screen shows your new, empty collection, and the right side shows all the available reports you can add to it.
Step 3: Add Your Most Important Reports
Now for the fun part: picking your reports. Remember those KPIs you decided on earlier? It's time to find the reports that display them best.
Simply find the report you want on the right-hand panel ("Reports") and drag it over to the left-hand panel under your "At a Glance" topic. Here are some of the most useful reports to start with:
Traffic acquisition: This report is essential. It shows you which channels (Organic Search, Direct, Paid Social, etc.) are bringing visitors to your website.
Pages and screens: This shows your most popular pages. It's great for understanding what content is attracting attention.
Landing page: This report shows the first page a visitor sees when they arrive. It’s perfect for seeing which pages are your main entry points.
Conversions: If you have conversion events set up (like form submissions or clicks-to-call), this report gathers all that data in one place.
E-commerce purchases: If you run an e-commerce site, this is non-negotiable. Add it to see your revenue and sales data.
Drag your chosen 4-5 reports into your new collection. After you're done, click the blue Save button in the top right. Once saved, click the back arrow to return to the main Library page.
Customizing Your Reports for Actionable Insights
The default reports are a great start, but you can go one step further by creating a custom "overview" report that acts as a true at-a-glance dashboard.
Creating a Custom Overview Report
An overview report uses "cards" — small widgets that display a key metric and a simple chart. Let's create one that summarizes our key lead-generation metrics.
From the Library, click + Create new report and then select Create overview report.
Click the + Add cards button. You'll see a gallery of "Summary Cards" available.
Find and select the cards that correspond with your KPIs. For example, you might add:
Users
New users
Sessions by Session source/medium (a great card!)
Conversions
Total Revenue (if applicable)
You can search for cards by name to find them quickly.
Once you've added your cards, you can drag and drop them to rearrange their order. Put your most important metric - like Conversions or Revenue - at the top.
Click the blue Save button, give your report a name like "Business Snapshot," and click Save again.
Now, go back to your Library, find the "Business Dashboard" collection we made earlier, click Edit collection, and drag your new "Business Snapshot" report into the collection. Place it at the top of the list for easy access. Save the collection again.
Publishing Your New Dashboard
You've built your custom dashboard - the last step is to make it visible in your everyday navigation menu.
In the main Library view, find your newly created "Business Dashboard" collection.
Click the three vertical dots on the right side of the card.
From the dropdown menu, select Publish.
That's it! You'll now see "Business Dashboard" in your main "Reports" navigation on the left of your screen. When you click it, you’ll see the custom overview and detailed reports you added - all your essential data, logically organized and ready for you.
Final Thoughts
Creating a simple dashboard in Google Analytics is one of the most effective things you can do to turn overwhelming data into something you can use every day. By focusing on your core business goals, building a custom report collection, and publishing it to your main navigation, you have a powerful tool to track progress and make better decisions, all without leaving GA4.
While a GA4 dashboard is fantastic for analyzing website data, reporting headaches often come from stitching together information from multiple platforms — like your ad accounts, CRM, and e-commerce platform. At Graphed, we solve this by letting you connect all of your marketing and sales data in one place and then build real-time dashboards just by describing what you want in plain English. Instead of spending hours wrangling data, you can get instant answers and visualize a complete picture of your business performance in seconds.