Analytics Blog
New Google Analytics Features Unveiled
Several Blast team members attended the Google Analytics Authorized Consultant Summit (GAAC) last week. The rollout of new Google Analytics features is one of my favorite take-aways – other than having a great time at the Googleplex. Google provided us with a glimpse of the new GA features, but we had to keep our lips sealed under NDA . However, they announced the new Google Analytics features today. (Read their blog for the juicy details.) Below are some of our favorite features:
Expanded Goals & Site Engagement Goals
Google Analytics offers two new goal types – time on site and pages per visit – to enhance functionality. Additionally, you can now have up to 20 goals in each profile. Yes! UP TO 20 GOALS!! You will no longer have to create 5 new profiles to track 20 goals!
Multiple Custom Variables
You can now segment different variables at the page, session, and visitor-level. Previously, you were limited to one custom variable/segment. Using these variables, you’ll be able to further segment your metrics against very specific visitor types. Multiple custom variables enables you to get down to the nitty gritty of understanding your audience!
Analytics Intelligence
New GA features make you smarter! Analytics Intelligence provides automatic alerts of significant changes in the data patterns of your site metrics and dimensions over daily, weekly and monthly periods. You’ll spend less time monitoring your analytics manually and have more time to do things like increasing your conversion.
Custom Alerts
Now you can create custom alerts to tell GA what to watch out for. Essentially turn Google Analytics into a data body guard! Receive alerts via email and in the GA interface when an event is triggered. You can set up insightful alerts of what is happening on your site, so you don’t miss anything on those busy days you forget to log in.
For example: Setup an ecommerce alert of a min/max threshold to get notified of a great sales day or a very low sales day. There are a lot of possibilities for this with access to 11 dimensions and 18 metrics.
The new Google Analytics features demonstrate Google is positioning this platform as a “powerful, flexible, and intelligent” enterprise-level analytics platform. Many of the previous shortcomings are addressed. It’s obvious that Google is dedicating resources towards continued improvements and features in its GA product.
This impressive list of new features is a great reminder to jump back into your own site’s analytics to discover the possibilities of what can and should be tracked for your business. Blast Advanced Media offers Google consulting services to help you properly configure and analyze what site visitors are doing, finding and not finding on your site. Now, Google Analytics helps your site speak to you, so you can use that knowledge to increase conversions, pageviews, and revenue.