Google is constantly changing things throughout their products, and thankfully, they do not forget about their free analytics app either (Google Analytics). There have been some pretty awesome additions to GA over the last couple of months / years, a few of which we are going to overview briefly here.
1. UI Update
If you haven’t used GA in a while, and you log in now, you will notice a complete refresh of the user interface. It’s clean, modern, and very easy to get around in. This happened quite a while ago, but we’re still happy it was done, so I’m mentioning it regardless.
2. Browser Size
So, there’s always the argument of “the fold”, right? What’s that anyway anymore? This topic is one that designers could argue endlessly, but the fact is that a lot of our data had to be based on a) assumptions, b) heat & click maps, c) user tests. The new browser size option within GA allows us to view specific pages and see exactly the percentage of users, and exactly what our users will see within that percentage when viewing the page.
This is fantastic, and takes out a lot of guesswork and potential arguing over what should be placed where, and why.
3. Real-Time Traffic Data
This one has been around since the later part of 2011, so it’s almost been a year since the initial roll out; but we still find that, in talking with clients or potential clients, it’s an unknown feature. Ultimately, this feature is great if you have the time (or staff) to monitor it throughout the day. It can give nice insights into entrance paths, sources, and locality; all tied into by-the-second (or minute) tracking. So, you were always wondering what time people were on your site most? Take a day off and watch your realtime stats give it to you… In real time!
4. Advanced Segments & User Tracking
Have you always wanted to learn more about your users? Let’s say you wanted to track unknown users coming to your site and deliver calls to action, promotional offers, etc. to them. Or maybe, you want to track them so you can see how many times they’ve visited your site until they contact you or buy from you. This is what we call Multi Touch Attribution and it will typically include a little (sometimes a lot) javascript wizardry to get it all setup.
Regardless of the reason that you want to track this date, advanced segments allow us to take our on-site GA implementation, and parse out that data into specific segments within GA to analyze and report on. So, now you know that “customer a” visited your site 15 times before buying your product, and “customer b” visited 3 times and never came back. What does that tell us? Well, right now nothing, but you can see where we can go with it.
