As a website owner, you are probably primarily focused on making your content engaging and getting more traffic to the site. The maintenance of the site is an ongoing process and you may seek continuous improvement.
Google Analytics allows you to track the performance of your website, its content and the behavior of its visitors on a regular basis. The key to performance improvement is to analyze the data reported in your Google Analytics dashboard and use the analysis as a base to devise highly effective content management strategies that will drive more relevant traffic to your site.
At times, it is necessary to customize your data analysis (in Google Analytics data) in order to get more insight into your site’s performance. You can do such customization by creating certain tools, known as Assets, in Google Analytics.
Assets are valuable as configuration tools to create custom data that can be used for detailed analysis in your Google Analytics account. You can easily share Assets as it would not reveal any of your account data or other personal information. In fact, the Share Assets functionality allows you to retain control over your data and privacy.
Let us do an in-depth study of the Assets as well as how you can share and use them.
What Assets Can You Share in Google Analytics?
You can share Assets in the form of:
- Custom Reports;
- Custom Segments;
- Custom Channel Groupings;
- Custom Attribution Models; and
- Goals.
Prerequisites for Share Assets and Related Key Information
- You can create and manage Assets at the reporting view level from your Google Analytics dashboard.
- You need edit permission to perform administrative and report based functions for your Google Analytics account to use the Share Assets feature.
- You can share single or multiple Assets at any given time.
- Once you share an Asset, only its configuration information is copied and shared.
How to Share Assets?
Steps to Access the Share Assets Option
- Sign in to your Google Analytics dashboard and select the “Admin” tab.
- Go to the “View” part and navigate down to the “Personal Tools and Assets” section.
- Choose the “Share Assets” option, which appears below “Shortcuts”.
Process of Sharing Assets
Once you have clicked on the “Share Assets” option, an entire list of Assets, including reports, channel groupings, and segments, will show up on the right-hand side of your Google Analytics dashboard. You may sort this Asset list based on the following parameters:
- Name
- Creation Date
- Type
If you intend to share all the Assets that belong to your Google Analytics account, you can tick the checkbox that appears besides the sort parameters discussed above. Otherwise, you can tick the checkboxes for the particular Assets that you wish to share.
Once you have ticked the relevant checkboxes, it will enable the red-colored “Share” button. When you click on this option, a pop-up will appear with two options, as seen below:
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Share Template Link
This option generates a unique URL that you can share with other users. In this way, they can implement the same configurations. You need to choose this option if you intend to share the Asset only with certain people.
Once you have selected the template link option and clicked on “Share”, another pop-up will appear with a uniquely generated URL and a message that asks you to copy the link. The pop-up also displays an information message that builds your trust about the secure privacy of your Google Analytics traffic data, as seen below:
You can copy the URL and insert it in any of your emails or IM chats easily to share it with the users of your choice.
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Share in Solutions Gallery
If you wish to share the Asset with everyone (publicly), you can do so in the Google Gallery.
When you opt for this method to share Assets, a pop-up will appear which seeks details to share a “Solution template”.
Usage Example
You will probably not need the Share Assets functionality on a daily basis to manage your Google Analytics account. However, it proves highly valuable for goal configuration and the testing process.
It is a Google Analytics best practice to create a goal in test view first (and not directly in the main working view). Once the goal tracking function operates smoothly and has been verified for a few days, you can recreate the goal in the main reporting view. But, recreating the goal configuration means spending twice as much time than is needed.
The Share Assets functionality helps you avoid this rework by enabling you to share the goal (from the test view) with yourself and copy it to the working view later.
We hope that the above information about the Share Assets feature in Google Analytics proves valuable to you. Please feel free to provide suggestions or ask queries directly in the comments section below.