How to Create a Production Dashboard in Google Analytics
Your Google Analytics account is packed with data, but finding meaningful answers often feels like sifting through endless reports. Building a performance dashboard gives you a single, scannable view of the metrics that truly matter to your business. This guide will walk you through, step-by-step, how to create a custom dashboard directly inside Google Analytics 4 to save time and keep your finger on the pulse of your website's performance.
Why You Need a Performance Dashboard in GA4
Before jumping into the setup, it’s helpful to understand what a GA4 dashboard is and why it's so valuable. In GA4, a "dashboard" is typically a custom-built report that you save and add to your main navigation for easy access. Instead of clicking through a half-dozen default reports every morning, you can see all your key performance indicators (KPIs) in one place.
The main benefits are straightforward:
Time-Saving: Get a snapshot of your website's health in seconds, not minutes. Stop rebuilding the same views or hunting for the right data every single day.
Focus on What Matters: Default reports are generic. A custom dashboard is tailored to your business goals, cutting out the noise and vanity metrics.
Consistent Reporting: Ensure everyone on your team is looking at the same numbers, defined in the same way. This eliminates confusion and aligns your team around common goals.
Easier Trend Spotting: When you look at the same core metrics daily, you get better at spotting anomalies, identifying trends, and catching problems before they escalate.
Step 1: Define Your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
A dashboard is only as useful as the metrics it contains. Before you start building, you need to decide what you want to measure. The right KPIs depend entirely on your business model and objectives. Resist the urge to track everything, instead, choose a handful of metrics that directly reflect your success.
Start by asking: "What actions do I want users to take on my website?" The answer will point you toward your most important metrics.
Examples of KPIs by Business Type
Here are some examples to get you started:
For an E-commerce Site: Your primary goal is to sell products.
Metrics: Total Revenue, Transactions, E-commerce Conversion Rate, Average Purchase Value.
Dimensions: Top Selling Products (by Item Name), Traffic Performance by Source / Medium, Device Category.
For a Lead Generation Site: Your goal is to capture leads, like form submissions or demo requests.
Metrics: Conversions (e.g.,
generate_leadorform_submitevents), Conversion Rate, Users, Engaged Sessions.Dimensions: Source / Medium (to see which channels drive leads), Landing Page (to see which pages convert best).
For a Publisher or Content Site: Your goal is likely to grow an engaged audience.
Metrics: Users, Pageviews, Engagement Rate, Average Engagement Time, Views per User.
Dimensions: Page Title and Screen Name (to see top articles), First User Source / Medium (to understand how people find you), Country.
For this tutorial, we'll create a general-purpose traffic acquisition dashboard that works for most business types. We'll focus on Users, Sessions, Engagement Rate, and Conversions by traffic channel.
Step 2: Building Your Dashboard Using a Custom Report
The best way to create a permanent, easily accessible "dashboard" in GA4 is by using the Library feature to build a new detail report and then adding it to your navigation menu. Let’s walk through the exact steps.
1. Navigate to the Library
In the left-hand navigation menu of GA4, click on Reports. At the very bottom of the sub-menu that appears, you’ll see an option called Library. Click on it. The Library is where all of your reports are stored and where you can customize the main navigation menu.
2. Create a New Report
In the Library, click the blue button that says + Create new report. You’ll be given two options: "Create detail report" and "Create overview report." An overview report is a higher-level summary, but for our dashboard, we want the flexibility of a detail report.
Select Create detail report.
3. Choose a Template
GA4 provides a few templates to get you started, but it's often easiest to build from scratch to ensure you only include what you need. Select the Blank template.
4. Add Your Dimensions
You're now in the report builder. On the right-hand panel, you’ll see a section called Dimensions. Dimensions are the attributes of your data - they describe what you're measuring (e.g., the traffic source, the country, the device). Click + Add dimension.
For our traffic dashboard, we want to see where our users are coming from. A great dimension for this is Session source / medium. Find it in the list and select it. You can also add other useful dimensions like Landing page + query string or Device category to make the report more flexible later.
After adding your dimensions, make sure to set Session source / medium as the Default Dimension from the dropdown menu in the right-hand panel. This ensures it's the first thing you see when you open the report.
Pro Tip: To understand where your users first came from (great for top-of-funnel analysis), use "First user source / medium." To understand the specific channel that initiated the current session, use "Session source / medium."
5. Add Your Metrics
Next, it's time to add metrics. Metrics are the quantitative measurements - the numbers you want to analyze (e.g., Users, Revenue, Conversions). In the same right-hand panel, click Metrics.
Click + Add metric and select the following for a robust traffic dashboard:
Users: The total number of unique users.
Sessions: The total number of sessions.
Engaged Sessions: The number of sessions that lasted longer than 10 seconds, had a conversion event, or had at least 2 pageviews.
Engagement Rate: The percentage of sessions that were engaged sessions.
Conversions: The total number of conversion events (you must have these set up first!).
Click Apply after selecting your metrics. You’ll now see a data table populated with your chosen dimensions and metrics.
6. Set Up Your Visualizations
A good dashboard has visual charts for at-a-glance trend analysis. At the top of your new report, you'll see two chart options. By default, they might be off or showing the wrong visualization.
Click the pencil icon next to Charts. From here, you can toggle which charts are visible and select the chart type (line chart, bar chart, or scatter chart).
Make the first chart a Line Chart. This is perfect for visualizing trends over time for a key metric like Users or Sessions.
Make the second chart a Bar Chart. This is excellent for comparing performance across different dimensions, like Users by Session source / medium.
Once you’ve selected the chart types, click Apply.
7. Save and Name Your Report
Your dashboard report is now configured. Click the blue Save button in the top right corner. Give it a clear, descriptive name like "Traffic Performance Dashboard" or "Weekly Marketing Snapshot."
Click Save again. You’ll be taken back to the Library, and you’ll see your new report listed under the "Reports" section.
8. Add Your New Report to the Navigation Menu
This is the final, crucial step to making your report a true, easily accessible dashboard. In the Library, find the "Collections" section. Collections are the groups of reports you see in your left-hand navigation (like Life cycle and User).
Find the collection where you'd like your new dashboard to live. A good place is often the Life cycle collection.
Click the three dots on that collection and select Edit.
You’ll see the existing reports on the left and all available reports (including the one you just made) on the right.
Find your "Traffic Performance Dashboard" report on the right, and drag it into the desired topic on the left. A great place for it is under the "Acquisition" topic.
Click Save, and then select Save changes to current report.
Now, go back to your main Reports view. You’ll see your brand-new dashboard report right there in the navigation menu, ready for one-click access every day!
Advanced Option: Using GA4 Explorations for Deeper Dives
While custom reports are excellent for standardized, everyday dashboards, GA4's Explore section offers a more powerful, flexible environment for ad-hoc analysis. Think of it as a sandbox where you can build completely custom tables, funnels, and path visualizations without the constraints of the standard report builder.
Explorations aren't added to the main navigation, but you can save them and share them with your team. They are perfect when you have a specific, complex question you want to answer, like "How does behavior differ between users who first found us through organic search versus paid ads?"
Here’s a quick idea of what’s possible:
Free-form Exploration: Drag-and-drop dimensions and metrics to build custom tables and charts on the fly. This is the most flexible and commonly used exploration type.
Funnel Exploration: Visualize the steps users take to complete a key conversion and see where they drop off. Essential for optimizing user journeys.
Path Exploration: See the most common paths users take after arriving on your website or firing a specific event.
If your reporting needs are more complex than what a custom report can offer, diving into Explorations is a fantastic next step.
Final Thoughts
Building a custom performance dashboard in Google Analytics 4 is one of the best time-saving actions you can take. By curating your most important KPIs into a single, accessible view, you can stop wasting time on manual data pulls and start focusing on making adjustments that actually grow your business.
While GA4 is powerful, setting up dashboards can still be a manual process, and it only shows you one piece of the puzzle. At Graphed, we remove this friction by connecting all your data sources - from Google Analytics and Shopify to your ad platforms and CRM - in one place. Instead of building charts manually, you can simply ask for what you need in plain English. We designed it so you can ask, "Show me a dashboard comparing Facebook Ads spend vs. Shopify revenue by campaign for last month," and get an interactive, real-time dashboard in seconds, not hours.