Calculated Metrics (Beta) – new Google Analytics feature rolling out

Google Analytics have released another great feature, and this is one of my favourite updates so far.  You can now work out a key metric based on data that’s already in your GA account but isn’t calculated and displayed by default.

Calculated Metrics is still in Beta – if you have access to it, you’ll find it in your admin panel here:

If you have it, you can create up to 5 new calculated metrics which can be used in Custom Reports, Dashboards and Widgets.

How can you use calculated metrics? They’re different from custom metrics in the sense that they simply take two existing metrics and use them to form a calculation which gives you some meaningful information relevant to your business.

For example, If you already have key event tracking in place – for file downloads or contact form submissions – you might want to know how many files are downloaded per unique user, per pageview, or per session.

You could also work out the percentage of forms submitted per pages viewed. In the example below, we’ve done just that:

 

We then created a widget using this calculated metric and included it in a dashboard, which looks like this:

 

 

Calculated Metrics allow you to see the numbers that matter to you within Google Analytics – they’ll allow you to find actionable insights more easily without needing to get your calculator out or export your data to a spreadsheet!