Most business owners know their website data is valuable. Far fewer have the time to do anything with it.
The usual routine goes something like this. At the end of the month, someone logs into Google Analytics, exports a few reports, copies the numbers into a spreadsheet, tidies up the formatting, and tries to compare them with last month. Then they do it all again for any other tools they use. By the time the report is ready, half a day is gone, and the numbers are already a few weeks old.
It's a story we hear from businesses all over Cork. So here in Mallow, we recently built a dashboard for a client to put an end to that routine. Here's what it does and why it works.
The problem: two analytics tools, no single picture
Our client was running two analytics platforms on their website:
- Google Analytics 4, for its marketing reports and its links to Google Ads and Search Console.
- Matomo, a privacy-focused analytics tool that can be set up to count visits without tracking cookies. That means it still records visitors who decline cookies, which Google Analytics misses.
Both tools were telling part of the story. Neither was telling all of it. Compiling a monthly report meant logging into both, exporting data from each, and lining the numbers up by hand. It was slow, it was easy to get wrong, and it rarely got done on time.
The solution: one dashboard that builds itself
We built a dashboard that connects to both Google Analytics and Matomo and pulls the data together automatically. It has two parts.
A sheet for every month
Each month, the dashboard creates a new sheet with that month's figures. Visitors, page views, traffic sources, top pages, conversions and the other numbers the business cares about are laid out the same way every time.
Because every month follows the same layout, it's easy to flip back to any previous month and see exactly what was happening. Nothing gets overwritten and nothing gets lost.
An overview with long-term trends
On top of the monthly sheets sits an overview with a set of graphs showing how the key numbers have changed over time. This is where the real value is.
A single month on its own doesn't tell you much. Twelve months side by side tell you a lot:
- Is traffic growing, flat or slipping?
- Which marketing channels are pulling their weight?
- Are seasonal peaks arriving when you expect them?
- Did that new campaign or website change actually make a difference?
The graphs answer those questions at a glance, without anyone needing to build a chart.
Updated automatically, once a month
The most important feature is the one nobody sees. At the start of each month, the dashboard updates itself. It fetches the previous month's data from both platforms, adds the new monthly sheet, and refreshes the trend graphs.
Nobody has to remember to run it. Nobody has to export anything. The report is simply there, ready to read.
What this means for the business
The client now gets an up-to-date picture of their website every month without spending hours compiling it. That time goes back into running the business.
More importantly, the data actually gets used. When a report takes half a day to put together, it tends to get skipped when things are busy, which is exactly when you need it most. When the report builds itself, decisions get made on real numbers instead of gut feeling.
The benefits we see with automated reporting like this:
- Hours saved every month that used to go on copying and pasting.
- Fewer mistakes, because the numbers come straight from the source.
- A consistent format, so this month can always be compared with last month and last year.
- A complete picture, combining Google Analytics and Matomo instead of choosing between them.
- Trends you can actually see, rather than numbers buried in separate exports.
Could your business use something similar?
Every business tracks different things, so every dashboard we build is different. Some pull from Google Analytics and Matomo like this one. Others bring in sales data, ecommerce platforms, CRMs or accounting tools. The principle is the same: get the numbers you need in one place, keep them up to date automatically, and make them easy to understand.
Whether you're in Mallow, elsewhere in Cork or anywhere in Ireland, if you're spending hours each month compiling reports, or you have data you never get round to looking at, take a look at our custom dashboards service or get in touch for a free 30-minute call. We'll talk through what you track today and what an automated dashboard could do for you.