Google Analytics is a free suite of tools that help you analyze your website’s traffic, write better-targeted ads, strengthen your marketing program, and create higher-converting websites. If you have an account, but haven’t logged into your account for a while, you might want to take a few minutes and take a look around. Google has made some remarkable improvements in the design and reporting features:
1. A redesigned and streamlined user interface makes it easier to navigate, which was a major complaint about previous versions.
2. You can now create up to 20 customized dashboards (which boggles the brain a bit), for creating reports, keeping them organized and making them easier to find.
3. New reporting options including Pivot Tables and both Term Clouds and Keyword Clouds help you understand how site visitors found your website.
4. Detailed mobile device reporting is now available. The screenshot below shows the report screen with the graph at the top and the detailed report by device type at the bottom. To view a larger version, click here.
5. Google has completely redesigned the old Funnel Reports and created features that now allow you to more clearly visualize how users experience your site. These new reports also help you better identify navigation and bounce issues on your site. To view a larger version,
click here.
6. They’ve also added easy-to-use Multi-channel Funnel Reports so you can track every method through which the user accessed your site – not just the most recent one. This is cool in itself and might yield some information on your users’ device preferences or on
your site’s usability with some devices.
7. Rounding out the new reporting features is the Social Engagement Report which tracks the social interactions that your visitors had while visiting your site. Did they like/send, +1 or Tweet your page? You can also read their comments and feedback that they shared with others.
8. And, lastly, for keeping a better handle on all your Google-based activities, Google Analytics now integrates with Google Webmaster Tools and AdSense and you can navigate among all three.
The best indicator that your site is doing well is, of course, sales if you do e-commerce, or traffic if you don’t sell. But knowing why it is doing well is enormously useful for making decisions on what effort to put into your website, and where.
Sometimes the truths the data reveal are surprising!
