Making the Home Screen Actually Cool in Google Analytics

"Lost time is never found again" -- Benjamin Franklin

I've personally lost too much time wandering around the home accounts screen in Google Analytics, trying and failing to quickly find the one single profile I need to access amidst a sea of more than 100. It ain't pretty... or, it wasn't until now. 

Let's face it: the Google Analytics home page is busy, and painful to navigate when you’re under the gun looking for a single profile. 

This is symptomatic of having Admin rights, which give you access to every profile, and make all of these profile names visible on “home” and “all accounts” when you are hunting for your target. It's a mess, and starts to resemble unstructured LISP code (don't ask).

Usually, the home page looks phugly like this: (forgive the white-outs)

I shortened it up here for a nice picture. I have access to a lot of GA profiles it's a time waster. It's also embarrassing when I'm hunting through them in front of a client, and can't find their site...

The Fix: on the grey bar on the top of the accounts home page:

• Go through the list of profiles, and click the Star next to the ones you want to “Favorite”
• Select “show metrics”
• Select the “flat” Mode
• Click the “star” on Mode
• Select a date range

This is what things can look like when you follow the steps above. To me, this looks like a your closet AFTER someone who loves you cleaned it: (return to this view any time by hitting Home icon)