Live from Emetrics: Google Analytics - The Next Generation

At the Emetrics Summit today in San Francisco, Brett Crosby of Google Analytics announced the launch of a new version of Google Analytics.

Jeff Veen, also of Google and previously at Adaptive Path, then took the audience on a tour of the enhanced features, including improved drill down capabilities, email reporting and drop-in/punt-away dashboard building. Developed with a healthy infusion of customer experience design (thanks Jeff!) web analytics industry jargon has been replaced by more marketer-friendly terminology. Categorization is also much more intuitive and visualization is definitely a big step up. And one major annoyance IMHO has been fixed...the browser back button now works!

The crowd at the Google booth was large after the announcement. Google was upgrading accounts at their booth, and giving away free t-shirts. Any new Google Analytics accounts will automatically be moved to the new interface. Existing accounts will be migrated over to the new interface over the next few weeks. Once accounts are migrated, they will be able to access both the old and new interfaces for 30 days. Read this post by Google Product Manager Jeff Gillis for links to a tour and other helpful resources.

Comments

[Eden Spodek]

Hi June,
How does this version of Google Analytics compare to other web analytics tools?
Thanks.

[RyanRFD]

In terms of the information available not much has changed from the last version. It seems to be mostly a cosmetic upgrade. There are apparently options for creating customized dashboards and having reports emailed to you now, but I have yet to play with them.

[June Li]

Hi Ryan,
You're right that the back end has not changed. Justin Cutroni has posted here about what's new
(http://www.epikone.com/blog/2007/05/08/welcome-to-the-new-google-analytics/)

Eden,
As Ryan has said, not much has changed in the type of information that's been collected. The new interface allows for much easier drilling down and segmenting of the data using the provided reports.

Google is excellent for reporting on pre-determined campaigns. Reporting on Adwords campaigns is particularly easy, and you can easily get your Adwords impressions and cost data if you link you Analytics and Adwords accounts (which is why GA is free - to make Adwords easily more profitable to users)

Where the differences start to show up versus other paid analytics tools is in the variety of custom metrics and custom reports. If you want to change the columns of a report, you can't in Google Analytics. You have to export to Excel and manipulate it there.

The new interface will take some getting used to. Google has provided a "report finder" to make the transition from old to new much easier.