Google has been pretty busy over the past
month or so, launching the Panda update to their search engine
ranking algorithm and Google +1, not to mention their numerous
April Fools pranks. However, an important release for many website
owners is the beta of the next version of Google Analytics.
Now the first thing I must say is that it is a
beta, so Google has not included all the features that are in the
existing version, particularly exports to PDF and emailing reports.
You will also not find the much under-used, but very useful In-page
Analytics report. That said, there are improvements that you may
want to take advantage of, or you may simply want to stay informed
about, so you can hit the ground running when this version is
officially made available.
Visually, the interface has changed; with
efforts to group together similar reports within the Visitors,
Traffic Sources, Content and Conversions sections to make
navigation more intuitive. You will also notice some re-labelling
of the report names, which will be helpful to newcomers to the
product in understanding what each report is attempting to tell
you.
More importantly, there are significant
changes to functionality, which will increase flexibility in
working with Google Analytics and notably facilitates further types
of reporting.
In the current version of Google Analytics,
the Dashboard serves as a one-stop shop where you can place links
to the key reports that you want at your finger-tips. However, if
you are interested in a lot of reports, or you have different users
with different data needs, a single Dashboard is a little
restrictive. The new product allows you to have multiple
Dashboards, allowing you to group similar reports in one place for
example for managers interested in achievement against key
performance indicators, webmasters reviewing content usage, and
marketers analysing the effectiveness of traffic sources and
attributing value to campaigns.
The graphing has also been improved, and you
can now quickly plot individual rows of data on your reports, for
example if you want to focus on specific keywords or campaigns, or
contrast them against overall traffic or segment performance.
The true power of web analytics is the ability
to measure performance against website objectives; Google Analytics
calls this Goal tracking. In the current version you can track
primary, process-driven goals that lead visitors to a specific
destination, such as registering for a newsletter or completing a
checkout process and engagement goals of time on site or pages
visited. Many website owners that have come to our Google Analytics
training offer downloadable files on their website, which
previously they have had to track with either dummy page views or
more recently as Events, however they could never be set as Goals.
The new version of Google Analytics now lets you specify Event
Goals so that you can report Events as website objectives, and
ascribe different Goal Values to different Events if you require;
for example you may want to attribute a lower lead value when a
free whitepaper is downloaded compared to the lead value for a
product brochure. This feature could also be used to demonstrate
usage of interactive features as a Goal, such as time spent
watching a video, or to track exits from your website to capture
referrals and attribute value to those clicks.
The beta version of Google Analytics is
gradually being rolled out to all Google Analytics accounts. I
recommend taking a look so that you can plan how you can take
advantage of this update to get better insights and more value from
your website and online marketing efforts.
Authored by Ian
Cockayne