For those that have not noticed Google Analytics has had an upgrade, and I am very impressed with the new features and look of the upgraded Google Analytics.
The most obvious change is the look and feel; the entire interface is very quick and easy to read, this readability is brought about by changes in the size of the graphs and fonts, along with the style of graphs used. Figure 1 below show the new Google Analytics interface dash board (for one of one of my newest websites)
Figure 1: The Google Analytics Dashboard
New and Favourite features of the new Google Analytics
Below is an overview of some of the features in Google Analytics, starting with my favourites
Compare to Past
This is the nicest and most useful feature in the new Google Analytics. This feature easily allows you to compare any two date ranges using either a calendar or timeline selector, and I think it is great. You can easily compare months, weeks, or even days of week, to find date based trends.
Figure 2: Comparing date ranges with the Google Analytics Compare to Past feature
Figure 3: Google Analytics Compare to Past Calendar Range selection
Figure 4: Google Analytics Compare to Past Timeline Range selection
Navigation Summary
This basically allow you to chose specific pages showing which local page/s user have come from and which local page they navigate to after the page you selected on after this page.
Bounce Rates
I love this feature, note it was available in the earlier version of Analytics but in the new Google Analytics Bounce Rates are shown everywhere, giving you a quick and easy guide to the way a particular page, post or article is appreciated, or how easy it is for a visitor to find their way to another one of your pages.
I found that many of my websites and articles had very high bounce rates, the way I solved this issue was to put at the bottom of each article a section titled related articles with at least 6 related articles, this alone improved my bounce rate from 90% down to 30-40%. If you think about this is a lot of visitors that are staying around and enjoying more of what you have to offer. For a company that is involved with sales this could increase you sales a few fold.
Entrance Keywords
Entrance Keywords is another great feature, which tells you what keyword a user is putting into their search engine to find a specific page. This allows you to see what your visitors are really trying to search, and can give you an idea of the popularity of certain keywords or phrases.
If you found a particular keyword was searched for a lot you should consider doing a follow up article or post.
Customizable Dashboard
As the name suggests you can totally customize your dashboard, moving panes and windows around to your liking, so that on your first page you can display the stats that you care most about.
Additional access
If you are lucky enough to have people working for you, there is now a feature to give additional users Administrator or even Read only access to the analytics interface for your sites, this is great if you are a busy executive or business person and don’t need to get involved at this level.
Report Emailing
Are you travelling a lot of too busy to login to the analytics interface and just want to be emailed a copy of your dashboard at a specific interval? If yes then this feature will be for you, You can specify an unlimited number of users to receive the report so this feature is great for big businesses or companies.
With this great new interface and new features why not login and start exploring or if you have never used Analyatics now is a great time to start, and best of all the entire service is free. Head over here to sign up to login http://www.google.com/analytics
What do you think of the new Google Analytics, is it good or bad, what is your favorite feature, plese let me and this blogs readers know.