Many people like to "wing it" when learning a new software platform. If that's you, that's absolutely your prerogative, and we won't try to stop you!
But when you're learning a new platform for business purposes (especially when you're paying for that platform), wasted time equates to wasted money, and it often makes more sense to "read the manual" before you dive in.
You'll find 3 articles in our "Getting Started" series geared toward users of different experience levels.
Part 1 (the article that you're reading now) is aimed at absolute beginners looking to learn their way around our platform and understand what each component is and what it does.
Part 3 provides advanced tips and best practices for users who want to really "level up" their usage of the AgencyAnalytics platform.
In this article, we'll provide definitions and walk-throughs of the following core platform sections and components. We also recommend checking out our onboarding webinar to see some of the components in action.
Account Settings
Clients
Integrations
Metrics
Dashboards
Reports
Widgets
Users
Account Settings
All settings related to YOUR account (as an individual user) or YOUR AGENCY'S account (as opposed to any of your clients) are found by clicking your user icon in the upper right-hand corner of your screen.
From there, click "Profile" to configure your user or company information. Need particular information to appear on your invoice? Add it here. White label settings are found here as well.
Need to make changes to your Billing? Click on your user icon in the upper-right-hand corner of your screen and select "Billing".
Clients
Our entire platform is built around the idea of Clients. What is a Client, exactly? Read more here.
All of your "Clients" (customer accounts) are found in the root of your AgencyAnalytics account. Each Client holds all of the marketing channel data, reports, and dashboards for that particular customer.
Data Sources
"Data Sources" is our phrase for a marketing channel. Our data sources include SERP rankings, Google Analytics 4, Google Ads, Facebook Social, various email, Local reviews, call tracking platforms, and much more. You'll find a complete list here (with detailed setup instructions for each).
Each Client can host one of each data source type. So, you create a Client with the customer's URL and company name. Then, you connect the customer's marketing channel data (data source) inside of that Client.
From the main Client's control panel, you can click any Client to enter it and work with its data source.
Data sources are found in the left-hand side navigation menu after you open a Client. You can click any data source in this list to begin setting it up and importing your customer's data.
Once you connect a data source, that data will be available to add to your client dashboards and scheduled reports (more on those shortly).
Metrics
Each Client contains data sources. And each data source contains metrics. A metric is basically a KPI or a data point.
For example, in the SERP tracking data source, you have metrics like Google Ranking, Google Change, Google Local Ranking, Volume, and more. Enable or disable metrics in the rank tracking data source by clicking the "settings slider" and then ticking/unticking the box for each metric. While that article covers the SERP tracking data source specifically, metrics function the same way in all data sources.
These check boxes only control the metrics that are shown for your own personal view of the integration. We'll talk about configuring metrics within a report, choosing which metrics a client user can see, and more later in this guide.
Dashboards
The word "dashboard" can be confusing, because some customers (and even some staff - oops!) use it to refer to our entire platform.
When we use the word "dashboard" in this guide, or elsewhere in our written documentation or within the platform itself, we're referring very specifically to our live, web-based user marketing dashboards.
Dashboards serve as an "at a glance" control panel for each Client, where you, your staff and (if you choose to allow them access) your customers can view all of your most important metrics, from all of your connected data sources at once, in a single screen.
It's a great "value add" to let customers log in and review their live, up-to-the-minute marketing data 24/7.
When you first click on a Client, you'll see a blank Client dashboard, with a button to click saying "Create Dashboard Section".
Even if you've already connected multiple data sources, that does NOT mean that you'll see data in the client marketing dashboard yet. The dashboard has to be configured separately.
Start by adding and configuring your widgets. Easily create a dashboard by applying a pre-configured dashboard template.
Learn more about client marketing dashboards in our Knowledgebase. Here's a great video walk through as well.
Reports
Automated reporting is one of the core features of our platform.
Basically, you design the report once, set the schedule for the report & then the report is sent via email on your schedule using fresh data (from the data source/marketing channels that you've connected) each and every time.
Clients hold reports for each customer, just like they hold data sources.
Navigate to the "Reports" section for any given customer by opening their Client (as described in the "Clients" section above), then clicking "Reports" at the bottom of the left-hand navigation menu.
Here are a few steps to get you started:
Create a scheduled report
Create a one-off report for instant download
Add sections to a report
Add widgets to a report
Similar to the client marketing dashboards, you can easily create a report by applying a pre-configured report template.
There are quite a few settings available when setting up reports. Learn more about reports in our Knowledgebase. And check out this video walk through of our new and improved report editor.
Widgets
Widgets are another crucial part of our platform. We use widgets within our client marketing dashboards, and within our report design editor.
Widgets give you granular control over the exact look, feel, and KPIs displayed for the dashboards and reports.
You can choose from a wide variety of widget types, from simple widgets displaying a single KPI to complex bar graphs, pie charts, and more. There are literally unlimited possibilities as far as designing a dashboard using widgets.
Start by adding and customizing widgets:
You can also drag and drop widgets to re-arrange them and dynamically resize them to meet your dashboard needs.
Learn more about report editor widgets in the "Reports" section of the Knowledgebase, and about client marketing dashboard widgets in the "Client Marketing Dashboard" section of the Knowledgebase.
Users
There are three different types of users in our system.
Admin users: There can only be one of these per account, and this will be the person/email address used to initially sign up for the account with AgencyAnalytics. This is the only account with access to billing and white label settings.
Staff users: These are typically employees at your agency. Staff users have access to everything that relates to clients/Clients by default (although this can be restricted). Staff users can also be given access to billing or white label settings.
Client users: These user accounts are meant for use by your customers, so that they can log in and view their data in real-time. You have a high degree of access to restrict client access to data; you decide exactly what each client can see and what they can't see.
Customers are often confused about the difference between Clients, dashboards and client user accounts.
If you've already set up a Client, imported their data using data sources, and designed a client marketing dashboard, why do you have to go through the extra step of creating a client user account?
Think of it this way: Clients are used to in-house marketing channel data, dashboards, and organizing the scheduled reports for each customer.
But as the original account owner, you have the choice as to who can log in and view that data. You don't ever NEED to create any staff or client user accounts if you don't want staff/clients to login and work within the platform.
Clients don't need an account to view scheduled reports that you send to them via email.
We highly encourage you to create staff accounts if multiple people will have access to your AgencyAnalytics account so that you can control who has access to what.
And we encourage you to utilize client user accounts so that you can offer your customers the "value-added" benefit of logging in to view their live data.
But the choice is yours.
Learn more about creating users, setting their permissions, and restricting their access in our Knowledgebase or in this video tutorial.
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Ready to dive deeper and learn some tips and tricks to get more out of your AgencyAnalytics membership? Check out Part 2 of our Getting Started Guide to get your account set up properly and streamline your processes using our recommended best practices.
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