A New Look for Google Analytics

Google has recently released a new version of their popular Analytics product, with a new interface and some useful new features. At the moment, existing Analytics users will just see a link to the new version within their account, but eventually it’s likely that Google will transfer all accounts to the new interface by default.

If you’re used to navigating around the existing version of Google Analytics, the new version can be quite disorientating to begin with. However, everything that’s currently available is still there, but you just need to get familiar with the new layout and links to find what you need.

Initial impressions of the new interface are good, however and there is some major new functionality throughout the redesigned platform. Firstly, Google says that it’s easier to get the required information through a faster, streamlined interface, although as noted above, this can take some getting used to at first.

There is a better emphasis on custom reporting through an improved reporting system that enables pre-filtered reports and the creation of additional data views. Notably, if you want to run different reports from the dashboard screen, you can now create multiple dashboards to meet these needs. There is also an enhanced Event tracking for interactions such as downloads and video engagement, and another new feature is the introduction of Plot Rows that provide the ability to graph and compare any two rows over time.

The enhanced dashboard is a particularly useful feature as custom widgets can be set up to track almost any metric. Another welcome change is the ability to use an Event to trigger a Goal, as this feature will allow more complex user behaviour tracking to be set up much more easily. Several disadvantages at the moment is that data can’t currently be exported by PDFs or email, and you can’t link Analytics to AdWords or AdSense accounts. However, these functions are expected to be “coming very soon”, according to Google.

On the whole, the changes to the Google Analytics interface are logical and well thought out, but users will need to relearn the navigation around the account and get familiar with the different layouts and new functionality.

If you have access to Google Analytics, we recommend that you give the new interface a try and if you need any help from us, please get in touch.

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