Custom Reports

Build personalized reports tailored to your specific needs.

This feature is available on the Premium plan and above.

Overview

Custom Reports let you combine the dimensions and metrics that matter most to your organization into a single view — choosing from a catalog of over 200 dimensions and metrics. Instead of jumping between multiple reports, create exactly what you need.

Navigate to Custom Reports → Manage Reports in the reporting menu to create and manage reports. Users with write access can create reports; anyone with view access to the site can see them.

Creating a Custom Report

Go to Custom Reports → Manage Reports
Click Create new report
Enter a report name and an optional description
Choose a visualization
Choose your dimensions and metrics
Optionally add a report filter and choose where the report appears in the menu
Click Preview Report to validate it against today’s data, then save

Your report appears in the reporting menu under the category you chose (by default, Custom Reports). It can take up to an hour for a new report’s data to finish processing. Reports are automatically back-processed for roughly the past 6 months of existing data; if you need history beyond that, contact support.

Dimensions vs Metrics

Understanding the difference is key to building useful reports.

Dimensions

Dimensions are attributes that describe your data — the “what” or “who”:

Page URL and Page title
Referrer type and name
Campaign name
Device type
Country, Region, City
Browser and Operating system
Event category/action/name

Each report can have up to 3 dimensions. The second and third dimensions become drill-down subtables — click a row to expand it.

Metrics

Metrics are quantitative measurements — the “how many” or “how much”. There’s no limit on metrics per report:

Visits
Unique visitors
Pageviews
Actions
Average visit duration
Bounce rate
Goal conversions
Goal revenue

Combining Them

A custom report combines dimensions and metrics to answer specific questions:

Question	Dimensions	Metrics
Which campaigns drive conversions?	Campaign name	Visits, Conversions, Revenue
Which pages do visitors view most?	Page title	Pageviews, Avg. time on page
When do visitors convert?	Day of the visit, Hour	Visits, Conversions
Where do our leads come from?	Country, Referrer type	Visits, Goal conversions

Dimensions and metrics have scopes: visit-level (e.g., Visits, Bounce Rate, Device type) and action-level (e.g., Page URL, Pageviews). Combinations that mix scopes the processing engine can’t reconcile are rejected with a “combination of dimensions is not compatible” message — reorder or swap dimensions/metrics of the same scope to fix it.

Report Filter

Beyond dimensions, you can filter which raw data feeds the report using conditions combined with AND/OR — for example, only visits from campaigns, or only pages under /services/.

Visualizations

Choose from six visualizations when creating a report:

Table — The default; rows and columns, best for detailed breakdowns and exports. Table reports can also be viewed as bar, pie, or cloud charts on the fly.
Evolution Chart — Values over time; best for trends and spotting changes.
Bar Graph — Category comparisons at a glance.
Pie Chart — Share-of-total comparisons.
Cloud Chart — Word-cloud style emphasis for label-heavy data.
Insights — Automatically highlights movers and changes.

Example Custom Reports

Campaign Performance Report

Track all marketing campaigns in one view.

Dimensions: Campaign name, Campaign source, Campaign medium Metrics: Visits, Goal conversions, Revenue

Device Performance

Compare how device types perform.

Dimensions: Device type, Browser Metrics: Visits, Bounce rate, Goal conversions

Geographic Lead Report

See where your leads come from.

Dimensions: Country, Region Metrics: Visits, Goal conversions, Conversion rate

Content Performance

Understand which content gets read.

Dimensions: Page title Metrics: Pageviews, Unique pageviews, Avg. time on page

Need a simple week-over-week summary? You don’t need a dimension for that — pick the Evolution Chart visualization with your key metrics and select a weekly period.

Managing Custom Reports

Custom Reports → Manage Reports lists all reports with actions to:

Edit (pencil) — Change dimensions, metrics, filters, or placement. Edited reports are re-processed, so historical data reflects the new definition.
Pause/Resume — A paused report keeps its collected data but stops processing new periods.
Copy — Duplicate a report as a starting point.
Delete (trash) — Remove the report.

Organizing Reports

Give reports clear, descriptive names:

✅ “Monthly Marketing Summary — All Campaigns”
✅ “Lead Generation by Geographic Region”
❌ “Report 1”
❌ “Test”

Scheduled Email Reports

Custom reports plug into scheduled email reports like any other report:

Go to Administration (gear icon) → Personal → Email Reports
Create a new email report and select your custom report among the report elements
Configure recipients, frequency (daily, weekly, monthly), and format (PDF, HTML, or CSV)
Save the schedule

Frequency	Best For
Daily	Active campaign monitoring
Weekly	Regular team updates, marketing meetings
Monthly	Executive summaries, board reports

Exporting Reports

Open any custom report and click the export icon to download the data as CSV, TSV (Excel), XML, JSON, or HTML. For a PDF, use a scheduled email report — PDF is an email-report format rather than a direct export. You can also add custom reports as widgets to your dashboards.

Custom reports are visible to everyone who has access to the website the report belongs to — there’s no per-report access control. For stakeholders who don’t log into Ghost Metrics, use a scheduled email report or an exported file.

Privacy note: the dimension catalog includes visitor-level identifiers (such as User ID). If you build reports on those dimensions, make sure the values your site sends contain no patient-identifying information — use internal pseudonymous IDs.

Best Practices

Start Simple

Begin with basic reports and add complexity as needed. A simple report you actually use is better than a complex one you ignore.

Focus on Actionable Data

Every metric in your report should inform a decision. If you can’t act on it, consider removing it.

Use Segments for Audience Cuts

Any segment can be applied to a custom report with the segment selector, so you usually don’t need separate reports per audience — one report plus segments is easier to maintain.

Review and Refine

Revisit your custom reports periodically:

Are you still using this report?
Does it still answer the right questions?
Should metrics be added or removed?

Don’t Duplicate Standard Reports

Ghost Metrics has robust standard reports. Only create custom reports when you need:

Multiple dimensions together
Specific metric combinations
A unique view not available elsewhere

Limitations

Up to 3 dimensions per report (additional detail via drill-down subtables)
Visit-level and action-level dimensions/metrics can’t always be combined (see scope note above)
New and edited reports take time to process, and automatic back-processing covers about 6 months — ask support for deeper history
Very large reports are truncated to row limits during processing

Next Steps

Dashboard — Add custom reports as widgets
Goals — Set up conversions to track in reports
Campaign tracking — Tag campaigns for better reporting