SiteCatalyst Interface Time-Savers [Inside Omniture SiteCatalyst]

In this post I will mention some cool SiteCatalyst interface features that you may not be aware of, but could save you some time and avoid stress (just in time for the holidays!).  My hope is that there are more out there that you may have found so please feel free to add them as comments at the end of this post.

Collapse Left-Navigation Menu Bar
Ever looking at a report with a lot of metrics and wish you didn’t have to scroll?  Many people out there don’t know that you can collapse the SiteCatalyst left-navigation bar to increase your report screen size.  Simply click on the “minus” sign above the menu to collapse and the “plus” sign to expand:

Double-Click to Add/Remove Metrics
Most of you should already know this, but in SiteCatalyst v14 you can double-click to add/remove metrics in the “Add Metrics” window.  For those of you using v13.x, hold down the CTRL key down when clicking on metrics to get the same result.

Double-Click to Rename Dashboard Reportlets
Ever want to change the name of a reportlet on a SiteCatalyst Dashboard?  Bet you didn’t know that you could double-click on it to rename it!

View Reports in Trended View
Most SiteCatalyst reports allow you to switch from the default “Ranked” view to a “Trended” view which shows you the context of the data.  This is useful for seeing if things are heading in the right direction.  You can let SiteCatalyst pick the Top 5 items to trend or you can specify the five items you want to trend.  If you want to see more than 5 of your data points trended, you can do this by using the ExcelClient.

Add Targets to SiteCatalyst Reports
While it is nice to look at your SiteCatalyst reports and see that the trends are going up or down (depending upon which way you want them to go), sometimes that is not enough.  Out in the real-world, there are mean bosses who want to hold you accountable for your metrics!  If this sounds familiar, you might want to check out a seldom used feature of SiteCatalyst called “Targets.”  Targets allow you to define metrics for specific timeframes and then show you how you are performing toward the targets that you set.  Let’s say I showed you the following graph:

You would most likely say that it looks like things are going pretty well.  Revenue is trending up and there are not many situations where you want Revenue to go down!  It may be time to head out early, take a well deserved vacation or ask for that raise you have been longing for!

But what if I then showed you the same graph, but with a Target added to show you where your boss expects your metrics to be…

Uh-oh, suddenly you are not feeling so confident!  This is why Targets are important since in web analytics, context is king!  You can set SiteCatalyst Targets manually through the interface or import them using an Excel Spreadsheet.  I encourage you to dig into the user manual and learn more about Targets when you have the time.

Reorganize Menus and Hide Menu Items
Did you know that you could completely re-organize the left-navigation menus of SiteCatalyst?  Does the notion of Traffic vs. Conversion Variables not seem intuitive to you?  Do you want to hide some SiteCatalyst reports that you don’t think your organization will care about?  You can do all of this and more in the Admin Console by creating your own menus and adding/removing items.  Simply select the report suite(s) you care about and open the “Menu Customization” tool.  For example, below you can see that there are a few Traffic reports related to “Day Parting” (time of day, day of week) buried within the Custom Traffic 1-10 report folder:

You can easily create a new “Day Parting” folder and drag these reports there instead of having to hunt for them under the Traffic reports folder.  When you are done, it looks like this:

Upon saving, all users will see the menus the way you arrange them and you can use the “Restore Defaults” button to return to the original menu structure if it is ever needed.  For obvious reasons, this functionality is limited to Administrators.

Save Custom Reports
Have you ever opened a Conversion (eVar) report, added the exact metrics you wanted, chosen the perfect graph and sorted on the perfect metric?  It is a great feeling when you get a SiteCatalyst report exactly the way you want it.  Once you have done this, why would you ever want to have to go through all of that work again?  While you can add the report to a dashboard or as a bookmark, you would then have to take the additional step to share it with co-workers.   If you are ok with everyone seeing this report, you can save it as a “Custom Report.”  To do this, simply create the report as you’d like it to be seen by others and click the “Custom Report” icon from the toolbar and give it a name and save:

Once you have one or more Custom Reports, they will show up in a folder at the bottom of the left-navigation bar.

Of course, you can also move these Custom Reports anywhere you want in the menu structure using the Menu Reorganization tool described above.

Create Global Calculated Metrics
Have you ever created a Calculated Metric that you wanted everyone at your organization to know about?  Perhaps you and your counterparts have different definitions for Bounce Rate which drives your superiors crazy.  Using Global Calculated Metrics, you can create Calculated Metrics and push them out to your organization.  As long as the user has Administrator privileges, these Global Calculated Metrics can be created on the fly from the Metrics Builder…

…or through the Admin Console:

• Adam Greco
• 6 responses
•  Web analytics

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