Google never sleeps. The company that created the most popular search engine is constantly rolling out new products and features. Take Google Analytics, for example. Over the last few months, Google has introduced more than a dozen new features to its popular (and free) website-tracking tool. If you’ve never experimented with this program in the past, now is a good time to start.
An entire book could be written on the features and functionality of Google Analytics. In this article, we will focus on five new features that are particularly useful for Internet publishers.
1. New-and-Improved Dashboards
Dashboards allow you to customize the way your data is presented. For instance, you can create a dashboard that shows entry keywords for a certain section of your website. You can tailor the presentation of the data so it gives you everything you need but nothing you don’t.
Dashboards have been part of Google Analytics for some time. But they got a makeover as part of the 2011 – 2012 rollout. You can now create more individual dashboards than ever before, and you can customize the presentation of each one.
Dashboards give you quick access to the data that matters most to you. It only takes a few minutes to set them up. After that, you’ll have instant access to the site metrics you need. It saves time and eliminates distraction.
2. Real-Time Web Data
You may feel like you’re in The Matrix, as you observe your visitors crawling over your website in real time. Google added this new feature in September 2011, and they’ve refined it since then. Real-time data is equally addictive and useful. It shows you what’s happening on your website right now. It allows you to generate custom reports on the fly, using the freshest data available.
Real-time data is a great way to measure your day-to-day success, especially when used to track specific marketing campaigns. For example, you can get instant feedback on the success of a social media campaign. Send a tweet through Twitter and watch the impact it has on your website, in real time. It’s a powerful tool for testing different promotional strategies.
3. Smarter Intelligence Reports
Google Analytics has offered “Intelligence Reports” since 2009. But in 2011, they made several enhancements to this feature. One of the most notable improvements is the overview report.
When you click on the “overview” link under the Intelligence tab, you’ll see a variety of events listed in a table. The table can be sorted by type of event, date, level of importance and other factors. These events represent significant changes to certain patterns on your website. For example, if your website traffic spikes as the result of a news story or citation on a popular website, the anomaly would appear in the overview section of the Intelligence tab.
As usual, this feature is fully customizable. You can create your own alerts based on the parameters of your choosing. You could set up an alert for a daily traffic goal, or for a bounce rate you deem unacceptable.
4. Visitor Flow at a Glance
The Visitor Flow feature shows how your visitors behave once they reach your site. It provides a graphical flow chart that helps you visualize certain patterns. For instance, you can see how people behave after entering the site through your top entry pages. If you notice an entry page with a high “drop off” rate, you can take the appropriate action. This might mean cross-linking some related content so readers can dig deeper into the site. Visitor Flow makes it much easier to spot beneficial and problematic trends.
5. Multi-Channel Funnels
Multi-Channel Funnels show you how certain traffic sources or “channels” have contributed to sales or conversions on your website. For example, some people might make a purchase (or other conversion) on your site after reading about you on another blog or website. Multi-Channel Funnels help you identify these conversion paths.
In fact, Google Analytics will show you every interaction a particular visitor has had with your website going back 30 days. This makes it easier to identify the original action that led to a certain conversion. Multi-Channel Funnels help you measure ROI for various marketing efforts.
If you’ve never used Google Analytics to monitor your website statistics, now is a great time to start. If you’re a veteran GA user, you might want to take a closer look at the new features available in 2012. For a more detailed explanation of the new features, check out this series of posts on the official Google Analytics blog.
