While AdWords provides insights into ad impressions, cost, and conversions, it doesn’t deliver all of the information needed about website visitor behavior after the click and before a conversion.

However, a wealth of actionable data can be found by using Google Analytics reports along with AdWords.

Google Analytics is a handy, and free, tool for measuring and monitoring website performance. Google continually updates and improves the Analytics platform so that marketers can make data-driven decisions.

Here is a couple of Google Analytics reports that I use to help to improve AdWords campaign performance that also makes reporting easier, and how to create shortcuts to your important reports.

Evaluate Bid Adjustments

Get a grasp on campaign and ad group bid adjustments performance with the Bid Adjustments report.

Analyze campaign bid adjustments applied to devices, locations, and ad schedule, by viewing the Bid Adjustment report; you can find this handy data under the AdWords section of Analytics.

While some of this data can be seen within AdWords, by looking at it in within Analytics reports, you can also see bid adjustment performance against all other defined goals and conversions that don’t carry over to AdWords.

To learn more about each bid adjustment, simply click on the arrow next to each campaign name for additional numbers.

Review Revenue From PPC

When clients require reporting that involves double-checking sales revenue driven from PPC against an internal sales report, the Sales Performance report in Analytics makes the process easy, and exportable.

To generate a Sales Performance report, go to the Conversions section, then Ecommerce > Sales Performance. Here you will find a list of all transactions within your defined timeframe.

To find transactions driven from PPC, add the secondary dimension Source/Medium.

Next, add the advanced filter Source/Medium containing CPC.

This will create a report of transaction ID’s that can be matched up with sales reports.

And if you need more details about the sale, just click the transaction ID number to see which products were purchased during the sale.

Create Custom Report Dashboards 

If most of your time in Google Analytics is spent digging through menus to find data, and especially data that you need more than once, then you should create a custom dashboard.

There are a few ways to create a dashboard in Analytics:

Save Within a Report

Navigate to the data you need, then simply click Save at the top of the page, and this will save the report as a dashboard.

Start from Scratch

If you want to build a report in the Dashboard on your own, go to Customization > Dashboard. Next, you have the choice to either start with a blank dashboard and add the reports you want manually, or use Import a dashboard from the Analytics Gallery.

When customizing your new dashboard, the world is your oyster! (And another blog post!)

What Analytics reports do you find most useful? Do you have any reporting tips or shortcuts to share with the class? I would love to know!