Yandex Metrica Dashboard: Setup Guide for Business Owners

Why a business owner needs a Metrica dashboard

Metrica has dozens of reports, and almost none of them help with a management decision. The dashboard is the summary page of a counter, where you can add, remove, rearrange and configure widgets around your own questions. Its job is simple: show whether traffic is growing, whether it turns into enquiries, and where something has broken.

This matters in Uzbekistan because customers rarely follow a neat funnel. One person sees an Instagram ad, another finds you in search, a third arrives from a Telegram channel and then places the order by phone. A default summary blends all of that together, so it is hard to tell which channel is doing what.

Start with questions, then add widgets

Before adding any chart, write down three or four questions the screen must answer. For most small and mid-sized businesses they are: is traffic growing, which pages receive visitors, how many target actions happened, and which devices customers use.

One widget per question. Six to eight blocks are easy to read. A screen with twenty charts soon stops being opened, and the main signal drowns among minor ones.

Separate search traffic from everything else

If you want to judge organic search, set a condition on traffic source: visits from search engines. When many widgets need it, save it once as a segment and apply it everywhere. That way an ad launch or a Telegram broadcast cannot hide a drop in search.

The same idea works for paid traffic: one set of widgets for ads, another for search. Mix them only in a top row that shows the overall total.

Also exclude visits from staff and developers early on, otherwise internal traffic distorts visitor behaviour.

Which widgets to include, and why goals beat visits

Without configured goals, the dashboard shows only attendance, and attendance does not pay the bills. For a local business in Tashkent it is especially important to count taps on the phone number and clicks to Telegram, because many customers skip the form and simply message or call. Without those goals, search and ads look weaker than they really are.

If part of your sales goes through marketplaces like Uzum or OLX listings, keep in mind that Metrica sees only what happens on your own site. The rest has to be combined separately. A basic set for a site that collects leads or bookings looks like this:

• Visits by day or week, split into Yandex and Google
• Key goals: lead form, phone call, Telegram click, payment through Click or Payme
• Conversion rate from traffic to those goals
• Landing pages: which sections actually receive visitors
• Share of mobile devices
• Bounce rate by landing page as a quality signal

Comparing periods and the weekly check

A single chart without a comparison says very little. Turn on comparison with the previous period and with the same period last year. Many niches have a season: Ramadan, the summer slowdown, back-to-school preparation, the wedding season. Without the year-on-year view, a normal seasonal dip is easily mistaken for a promotion problem. Make sure every widget uses the same period, or the numbers cannot be compared.

Once a week, on the same day, check in order: is there a sudden break in visits, does the goal trend match the traffic trend, has an important page vanished from landing pages, has the mobile share dropped. Typical combinations:

• Visits fell, goals unchanged: informational traffic probably declined, so check commercial pages separately
• Visits grew, goals did not: the new audience does not match intent, or pages lack a clear next step
• Sharp drop in one engine: open Webmaster or Search Console
• Mobile share rose, conversion fell: test the site by hand on a phone

What Metrica will not show, and who gets access

Metrica sees behaviour after the visitor lands on your site. Impressions, positions and queries live in Yandex Webmaster and Google Search Console, so review the dashboard alongside them.

The owner and the marketer need view access. A contractor can edit goals if that is agreed in advance. When someone leaves, revoke access the same day and review the list every quarter, because former freelancers and personal emails pile up. Name an owner of the dashboard and a day for checking it, otherwise even the best screen turns into an archive.

If you need to connect Metrica with CRM leads, advertising and sales, the markdev team sets up end-to-end analytics and reporting for your business. Describe your task and we will work out which numbers you actually need.