Google Analytics has made quite a stir and there has been lots of talk regarding the newest 8 features into its existing tool. These new features include: New Engagement Goal, Expanded Mobile Reporting, Advanced Table Filtering, Unique Visitors Metric, Multiple Custom Variables, Sharing Segments and Custom Reporting Templates, Analytics Intelligence, & Custom Alerts.
In case you haven’t checked them out or don’t now what to do with them let’s take a quick look at what they can do…
New Engagement Goals – lets you define up to 20 goals site conversions per profile. It also now measures user engagement and branding success through allowing you to set thresholds for “Time on Site” and “Pages per Visit”.
Expanded Mobile Reporting – lets you track your mobile applications and mobile websites performance through your iPhone or Android phones (apps: SDKs and documentation). And if you are tracking non-Java-Script enabled phones, that’s OK too! (code instructions)
Advanced Table Filtering - allows you to quickly filter through rows in a table based on various metric conditions. This video shows how your could filter thousands of keywords to identify only the keywords with a bounce rate of less than 30% and that referred at least 25 visits!
Unique Visitors Metric - this feature allows you to track how many actual visitors (via unique cookies) arrived at your site.
Multiple Custom Variables - lets you customize your Google Analytics to collect unique site usage data. Similar to the _setVar() function, but with the addition that you can define and track visitors based upon visitor attributes – section viewed, returning, not logged-in.
Sharing Segments and Custom Reporting Templates – if you created a custom report for a client or a particular tea, e.g. marketing, all you have to do now is share the URL for that particular report and it will import the pre-formatted template into that user’s account.
Analytics Intelligence and Custom Alerts - an algorithm-based monitoring system that will send you an alert on a trigger that you set up on various metrics or dimensions. I.e. you can get an alert for a 250% surge in visits from Twitter referrals last Friday or let you know visitor bounce rates from New York increased by 35% three weeks ago.
Asynchronous Tracking Code - helps speed up the performance and accuracy of your Google Analytics tracking. The new script (yes you do need to swap code) optimizes how browsers load “ga.js". You can also place your analytics snippet higher in the page without impacting content loading.
Overall these are some really nice and useful features that can really help you drive greater insights from your website or mobile application. If you want a more in-depth intro be sure to register for the Google Analytics Webinar on December 9th 2009.
A very short presentation, actually an excerpt from my talk at the NYC UPA in Feb, on why designers, clients, & UX folks alike need to STOP treating ‘brand websites’ as such and instead understand the 4 basic online business models to improve design, the experience, & show ROI EVEN IF YOU DON’T SELL ANYTHING!!!!
Thank you to everyone who came to my talk at eMetrics Madrid I really enjoyed it, and Madrid wasn’t too bad either Thanks for all the positive Tweets.
You can view or download my presentation here eMetrics Madrid Site Search. And a special thanks to all of you who have already viewed my presentation you’ve gotten it noticed by the people at SlideShare who currently showcasing it on their Technology page. MUCHAS GRACIAS!!!
This was my talk give the NYC UPA. It discusses what I call ” Designing Outcomes”, which is a type of ‘backcasting’ that I’ve found works better than other methods I’ve used for determining what steps need to be taken to achieve a specific goal. It does this by starting out with your desired outcome, end state, and moving backwards to the present.
For an example and tool to use this technique download the excel worksheet which shows a real client example from a women’s hair care line from a few years ago.
Thanks for all the positive 
