Google Analytics provides free, rich web stats for organisations
Google have been gradually updating analytics accounts to add some very shiny new features, and our (work) account was finally upgraded over the weekend. Apart from a fresh lick of paint and a slightly smoother interface (noticably quicker loading times, too), there have been some significant additions to the functionality provided.
On logging in, the first obvious change is the profile overview screen. In addition to listing your profiles this also gives quick breakdowns of Visits, Avg Time on Site, Bounce Rate and Goals, which can be displayed by day, week, month or year. There is also a traffic lighted percentace increase / decrease figure so that you can quickly see whether your profile is over or underperforming in comparison to the previous period.
Clicking into a profile, things aren’t so changed as to be scary. The dashboard is still laid out in the same way, displaying the point graph at the top and your custom area below. To the left are the usual options for filtering Visitors, Traffic Sources, Content and Goals.
The three big new features, which I will go into more detail with once I’ve had a chance to play with them, are Advanced Segmentation, Custom Reporting and Visualisation. Scraping the surface these features appear to add significant value to Google Analytics for any organisation and should help me to add a lot of depth to my work Analytics reports going forwards.
If anyone has had a play with these new features yet, please feel free to shout out in the comments. I’m off to have a play with my new toys; the first thing I will be hitting back with should be the Advanced Segmentation. Watch this space!
