I just got an email today from the Google Analytics team about a new interface and upgrades that they have added to the analytics reporting. Here is an excerpt from the email,

“What is new?
In the new version, your reports have been redesigned for clarity, greater visibility of important metrics, and ease of use. Here are just a few of the features you’ll notice:

• Email and export reports: Schedule or send ad-hoc personalized report emails and export reports in PDF format.
• Custom Dashboard: No more digging through reports. Put all the information you need on a custom dashboard that you can email to others.
• Trend and Over-time Graph: Compare time periods and select date ranges without losing sight of long term trends.
  
• Contextual help tips: Context sensitive Help and Conversion University tips are available from every report.

The new interface has everything the previous interface had and more. In addition, links within reports make it easier to navigate related information and explore your data.”

I went and logged in and it hadn’t changed yet, so I will keep an eye out on it. I’m excited about customizing the dashboard and some of the other tools to make the spots I go on a regular basis more accessible.

I wonder if they are going to ever launch a paid version and try to compete with other web analytic companies?

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I wanted to post about a topic that has been on my mind so much lately, especially because (lately) I have been working on gaining even higher conversion rates on mine (and my clients websites). I am talking about web analytics and what they can do for you and your business. On 97th Floor there was a recent post about a new analytics company that gives a detailed report of step by step browsing through your website to show you exactly what visitors are doing, and I have talked before about analytics companies like Crazy Egg and Tape Failure which lets you record sessions of exactly what paths (viewing the mouse moving on your site) visitors are taking, as well as analytical statistics, and tracking too.

I have used programs out there that are free like Google Analytics (and still do), but have found accuracy problems with them, and really with they had more features that were useful, and tools that worked 100% of the time. The only web analytics software I have used that has been flawless, and perfect in every way is from Omniture. It is a paid analytics software, but by far the most superior.

When you can find out things like the exact paths that your website visitors are taking, you can figure out what is being viewed the most, what is working and what is not. You can find out what products people are viewing the most, but not buying and then adjust to try and increase the conversion rate (maybe your prices are to high and need adjusting). How important do you think it would be to find out the pages that people leave from the most? (so you could change it, and try to keep them longer) What could you do with information like, what are the hot spots on your site, where are people clicking the most, behavioral targeting, and are they clicking anywhere near where you really want them to be clicking?  You can really improve your search engine marketing 100 fold with proper web analytics.

When you find out information like this it could help you improve your navigation which we all know will help us with our Google rankings, increase conversion rates, more sales which leads to more money in your pocket. Taking the time to understand website analytics could mean the difference between success and failure.

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Has anyone been playing around with Robot Replay? It is a analytics program created by an AJAX developing company that tracks the mouse of your visitors. About two months ago I was talking to my brother about playing with some programming to create something like this as it could be very helpful to actually watch exactly what your visitors are doing. It records each session and then lets you play it back through their back end and it shows you the session of that visitor. When they scroll down, how much text do they read, what they click on and when they click it.

It is pretty cool I haven’t tested it on enough sites yet, but I have used it to make some tweaks to some content placement and ads on a few sites. I’m running some tests on some affiliate and adsense type pages to see if it will help with placement to enhance click throughs and conversions.

It is definitely not supposed to take over your current web site analytics carrier but it is a cool addition just like crazy egg.

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I have been using the heat map and tracking software from Crazy Egg for a few months now, so I wanted to share a few things that I have learned over the course of those months. (more…)

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