The guide below is geared towards Universal Analytics, which is officially sunsetting July 2023. Explore our Google Analytics 4 Overview for a comprehensive look at the tools’ latest features, capabilities, and advanced analytics to enhance your website’s performance!

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Google Analytics' Day of the Week custom report lets you compare data specific to the days of the week.

The Day of the Week report lets you take a big picture comparison of website activity to answer questions like:

• Which day of the week are you receiving the most site visitors?
• Was Friday's site traffic an improvement over the previous Friday's?
• When should you send marketing emails?
• When are your customers typically purchasing?

Unlike more complicated analytics reports, the Day of the Week custom report is extremely simple to set up and easy to understand, and the quick-look insights will entice you to make immediate adjustments to your marketing strategy.

Google Analytics - Day of the Week Custom Report

A ton of manpower goes into strategizing, creating, and updating content on your website and in your emails. Comparing day of the week analytics data can help you determine when to make updates.

For example, if you are getting the highest website traffic numbers on Saturday mornings, you should evaluate what kind of content you offer on Saturdays that entices more people to browse your site. You can then create like-minded messaging to publish on another day of the week, and measure whether this improves your site traffic that day.

Conversely, if you have the highest sales and receive the most revenue Friday mornings, than you might offer a discount on Mondays, when your revenue is the lowest, and see whether the promotion boosts sales. Perhaps, you need to take down your site for maintenance or a big update. Use the Day of the Week custom report to determine when your site is least trafficked for the best day to perform the update.

The day of the week report is only your starting point, but by making small changes to your marketing plan and measuring the results, you can develop a winning weekly strategy.

Setting up your Day of the Week Report

Let's pretend you want to set up a custom report to measure which day of the week your website receives the most traffic and engagement.

• In your Google Analytics dashboard, click on "Customization" at the top left sidebar and click New Custom Report.
• Give your new report a Title and a Name. We chose: Day of the Week for both fields.
• Select your metric group. We chose three: Sessions, Time on Site, and Bounce Rate
• Add your dimension under the Dimension Drilldowns. For this report, our dimension is Day of the Week Name, listed under Time.
• Save your report.

Below is your sample report.

Sorting by Sessions, you can see that Wednesday is the day of the week with the highest website traffic, but visitors are staying on the site longest on Wednesdays. Consider what marketing promotion you sent early Wednesday, or late Tuesday to determine what is creating the increase of traffic.

Then, consider what content is getting traction on Mondays (you can view the landing page Acquisition report or campaign report to see what exactly is getting engagement). With this information, you can create a more compelling campaign to increase traffic and engagement on the weekends.

Google Analytics Day of the Week Report

Analytics insight is all about making incremental changes and measuring the success. Play around with the metric groups and days of the week dimension to gain insight into how weekly and daily traffic is affecting your overall bottom line. Than tweak, measure, and repeat!