Fri 18 May 2007
Google Analytics 2.0 Review
Posted by admin under Uncategorized, Tools, Analytics, Reviews, Blog
[3] Comments
Redesigned the reporting interface for greater customization and collaboration. - The first thing that came to mind when I browsed the new interface was that someone at GA must have borrowed a book from the library of John Marshall of ClickTracks: “The Visual Display of Quantitative Information” by Edward Tufte.
The team at Google Analytics accomplished two vitally important things when they redesigned the reporting interface:
1) Improved overall usability - report generation and navigation is much more intuitive
2) Enhanced data visability and interpretation - timelines and percentage change graphics certainly enhance the process of discovery
Email and export reports - This was something that was needed. Now they need to include API connectivity.
Custom Dashboards - AJAX dragability is a nice feature. However, I wish they would allow more granular control over each dashboard module.
Trend and Over-time Graph a very welcome function.
Improved contextual help tips - so far, so good.
New date range selector - The new date range selection (calendar, timeline) functionality makes it easier to contrast time segments.
Sticky URLs - The old GA version would revert back to your default dashboard view, the new fixes this.
PDF report with scalable (vector) graphics - pdf reports are a fact of life when it come to reporting. Having scalable (vector) graphics is a huge plus to those that like to maintain pretty images at all sizes.
I might as well start a wishlist for the next Google Analytics version:
- Incorporate a few of the Google Webmaster tool reports - (ie. Google rankings, web crawl errors
- Recordable clickstream data (www.clicktale.com)
- Advanced user defined segmentation (ala ClickTracks)
- User defined email alerts
