New new customer acquisition reports give quicker, more useful reports

Value: [rating=4]

Recommended link: Google Analytics blog - Act, Empower, Access

It’s now over two years since Google last made a major update to its interface and report when it launched (version 5) in Beta as described in Dan Barker’s post. Since then, there have been regular updates and we have highlighted the most important in our Google Analytics updates channel. This new update is one of the more significant and useful - definitely worth an alert.

Google always has interesting announcements on major updates at its annual partners conference. This year, it’s focusing less on new technology as it did with last year’s announcements about Universal Analytics. Rather it’s tackling the “elephant in the room” for analytics which is the relative lack of use of analytics…

Google rolls out a major update to Advanced Segments

Value: [rating=4]

Timing: Originally announced July 16th 2013, rolled out end August 2013

Recommended link: Google Analytics announcement on new Advanced segmentation feature

I've updated this post as a reminder that this feature is now live in Google Analytics accounts. I haven't seen an official announcement on the GA Blog, but I am now seeing this feature in my analytics at the top of relevant reports:

A couple of points I've noticed now it's live are:

1. It's not actually labelled "Advanced Segments" with a button unlike the original. Instead you see a slightly intriguing circle next to a drop down - not sure that's the best usability decision.

2. By default you get to see all your standard and custom advanced segments together, for example, we have two based on a custom dimension in Universal Analytics…

An example showing how to set up an AB test on Wordpress

What is A/B testing?

You'll probably be aware of the approach, I'm sure. A/B testing, also called split testing, involves your site serving  one of several versions of a page to show to a site visitor. The aim is to usually find a better approach to converting your visitors. [caption id="attachment_344" align="aligncenter" width="300"] What is A/B Testing?[/caption]

Why do you need it?

Put simply, how do you know if the changes you made to a page are working better than the earlier version unless you can compare them side by side? A/B testing allows you to make changes from a position of intelligence - knowing the impact of the changes you make allows you to learn what works and what doesn't, and make sure that you repeat the successes and not the failures.

A/B testing in WordPress

My…

Google Analytics adds Data Hub and Trackbacks to the Activity Stream Reports

Value/Importance: [rating=3] Recommended link: Google Analytics post: the Activity Stream in Social Reports In March 2012, we highlighted Google’s new Social Analytics as they were then described in the Beta we were reviewing. In August 2012 the Social Analytics feature became part of the Social Reports we now see in Google Analytics as a standard feature. This latest update to Social Report has two new additions: 1. Data hub activity - This feature, shown below, was originally available through a drilldown, so isn’t entirely new, but is now highlighted in the menu as Data hub activity. It's an interesting reminder from an SEO perspective that Google is able to track comment activity on a blog. If you're setting up a blog it's worth using a Google Data Hub partner. I recommend using Disqus which we use, or Livefyre. …

Examples of how to use the new widget, event and mobile segmentation features

Google Analytics 'Realtime' features launched almost 2 years ago, and brought plenty of practical benefits to tool. For example, see these 5 ways to use Google Analytics Realtime  from the excellent Helen Birch. The set of Realtime tools has now been updated with some very useful extras. Here are my 3 favourite updates, and a couple of reasons you may choose to use them: Realtime Dashboard Widgets. Realtime Event Reports. Realtime Segmentation by Desktop / Mobile / Tablet. Here are some screengrabs and notes on each of the changes:

New Feature 1. Realtime Dashboard Widgets:

Google have added ‘realtime’ widgets to dashboards. The tool to add those looks like this: Here’s how they look within the dashboard: (minor note: ‘dimensions’ aren’t yet working for me there. I presume they’re fixing this)

New Feature…

Track what turns your visitors on (or off) with Event Tracking in Google Analytics

Events Goals (Google help page) are a relatively unheralded feature which I thought would be useful to "flag up", since it can helps marketers report on key marketing outcomes related to conversion and campaign tracking which are often missed in my experience. I hope some of the 17 examples I cover in this post will help you report better on which features and messages site visitors are interacting with. These interactions are measured using Event tracking (Google Help Page) that can then be connected to the Goals features in Google Analytics (read my post on Setting Goals in Google Analytics if you're unfamiliar with this). Event Goals are a relatively new feature (introduced in April 2011). Judging by many analytics setups I review where Event tracking or Event Goals aren't used, the technique isn't so well known by non analytics specialists.…

A custom report for summarising goal performance

The conversion report in Google Analytics is probably the most important report in the entire service. The conversion report shows you the percentage and absolute numbers of visits which converted into a set of defined goals for a website. Goals can be any marketing outcome related to lead generation and sales from enquiries through to video views. Here is example of the goals in a typical conversion overview report:

This particular website converted 3.65% of traffic (conversion rate) into performing some sort of action which I have determined as a goal for the website. A total of 147 goals (absolute number) were completed in this particular month and this is one of many metrics used to measure the performance of the website…

Google Analytics 'Share Assets' for sharing report customisations within or between companies

I’m not sure if many people have discovered the ‘Share Assets’ option/button within the Profile menu of Google Analytics yet, but I only spotted it at the end of last year. With the launch of Google's New Analytics Solution Gallery which Dave has introduced we thought a reminder about this 'hidden feature' would be useful.

What is Share Assets?

Share Assets gives you a quick way to It’s a handy way of viewing and sharing all segments, custom reports and dashboards from one place. Select the configurations you want to share and then share the URL. The data relevant to each site in the profile isn't shared, it's only the customisation. How long has that been there? I'm not sure, but I'm a regular user, so not long. It certainly makes sharing configurations so quick and easy now. Really handy if you have…

The new Google Analytics Solutions Gallery tools

Value: [rating=3] Recommended link: Google Analytics Solutions Gallery Google Analytics offers many features to customise its reports to a business, which is great for a free tool. But I know from running Google Analytics training courses that many of the customisation tools aren’t used, so reports aren't really tailored to a business and different users in the business. I think this is mainly down to the time and specialist input needed for customisation. Google are obviously aware of this issue since they have created a new set of tools within their Solutions Gallery to help users with customisation. I think this is a great initiative and will be useful both to marketers at companies and consultants and agencies improving reporting for their clients.

What type of customisations are available?

Customisation are available for three different types of assets…

A review of 9 updates to Google Analytics

Google Analytics have rolled out a series of fairly big changes to their User Interface. They do this every so often, either to incorporate extra functionality, or simply to clean up the user interface & improve user experience. (See the tweaks they made last time, for example). This time around most of the changes are purely around the interface, though there are some large, useful functionality tweaks too. Editor's note: At the time of writing there isn't a new post on the Google Analytics blog to point you to for more detail, but we'll add that once available. This post covers the 9 main changes made to Google Analytics:

1. Top Navigation Changes

The top navigation (and the overall information architecture) has changed quite considerably. There are still 4 options, but they’ve altered: Here was the old top nav: …