New Google Analytics Features Unveiled

Powerful. Flexible. Intelligent.

Google has officially announced the release of new Google Analytics features which strongly position the product as an enterprise-level web analytics platform. Much anticipated additions to the tool include the ability to define up to 20 goals per profile (previously limited to 4), Intelligence reports that provide automated and custom alerts to changes in metrics and dimensions, and the ability to track visitors into Multiple Custom Variables (previously known as Custom Segments).

New Google Analytics features include:

• Intelligence Reports
• Automatic and Custom Alerts
• Expanded Goals
• Site Engagement Goals
• Advanced Table Filtering
• Expanded Mobile Reporting
• Share Advanced Segments
• Share Custom Reports
• Multiple Custom Variables

Google Analytics Gets Smart With Intelligence Reports

The new Intelligence reports allow you to see if significant changes are occurring within your Google Analytics data. For example; you received more visitors than expected, your bounce rate is increasing or you have experienced a spike in revenue from new visitors to your site. The Automatic Alerts within Google Analytics Intelligence provide you with this level of detail automatically and it is provided for historical data (back to mid 2008) in your profiles.

Automatic Alerts also let you know when things aren't going well:



Taking Intelligence reports to the next level with Custom Alerts allows you to define your own alert triggers and receive an email alert. For example you can create a Custom Alert to notify you (within Google Analytics and via email) when your Google AdWords campaign traffic meets a revenue target or when your organic (or free) keyword term from your SEO efforts has resulted in a certain number of visitors to your site.



Now Google Analytics really is smart!

Want More Goals In Google Analytics?

Google Analytics: Now With 20 Goals Per Profile



One feature that we have all wanted for a while now is the ability to set more than 4 goals per profile. Each Google Analytics profile can now be setup with 20 goals. These are also conveniently arranged in 4 groups containing 5 goals each.

Site Engagement Goals In Google Analytics

Evaluating the effectiveness of content based sites just got easier with site engagement goals in Google Analytics. Standard goals are great for reporting on particular actions you want your visitors to take (buying online, filling out a contact form or registering for your email newsletter) but what if your primary objective is providing quality content and an engaging experience for your visitors? Site engagement goals are your answer, now you can set a goal conversion for time on site or pages per visit allowing you to access the power of goal reports within Google Analytics.

If you are a SMB (Small to Medium Business), non-profit, government or any organization with a content or branding focused site you should definitely begin using site engagement goals.

Filtering Within Google Analytics Reports

Google Analytics Table Filtering allows you to filter the data presented within particular table reports. This allows you to quickly refine the data to your particular parameters, for example removing particular dimensions (like pages) based on metrics (like time on page) that are skewing your analysis.

Exploring the example further, you could take your Top Content report and then use Table Filtering to only include pages where visitors spend more than 0 seconds and less than 30 seconds.



This gives you direct access to under performing pages based on time on page. Then you can drill-down further by applying advanced segments (All Visitors, Search Traffic, Direct Traffic and Referral Traffic) to the report to establish if Traffic Sources relate to the under performance of the pages.

Expanded Mobile Reporting In Google Analytics

Google Analytics now allows for improved tracking of mobile devices, so you can now track interactions within your iPhone and Android apps to measure usage and engagement.

A new tracking code for mobile sites built using PHP, Perl, JSP and ASPX will also become available, allowing you to track all web-enabled mobile devices (not just mobile devices that run JavaScript).

Share Your Advanced Segments And Custom Reports

Advanced Segments and Custom Reports are powerful tools to drill deeper into your data. Now you can quickly share your Advanced Segments and Custom Reports with your colleagues making it easier to collaborate on the analysis of your site.

Multiple Custom Variables

This advanced feature opens up more opportunities for custom tracking using Google Analytics. Our team will be updating our custom Google Website Optimizer tracking solution to make use of Multiple Custom Variables, as well as looking at how we can make use it to attribute first and last click to conversions.

Previously Custom Variables (also known as custom segments or _setVar) allowed you to assign a visitor with one User Defined value, now with Multiple Custom Variables you will be able to set each visitor with numbers User Defined values.

Labels: Google Analytics, Google Analytics Tips, new Google Analytics features

Measuring Social Networks with Google Analytics

Lets Start with a Quick Overview

Social networking can be used to increase traffic to your website, generate more sales and leads, and enhance your visibility to potential and existing customers. In order to achieve these objectives you need to assign value to each initiative you undertake and align social networking with your business objectives.

If you want to increase the number of visits or improve your visibility in the marketplace, you should focus on listening to clients and competitors (Google Alerts, Twitter), share content (Flickr, YouTube, Blogger, RSS, MySpace), build good relationships (Facebook, LinkedIn), dialogue with customers (Twitter), generate buzz (Digg, Twitter) and participate in a wider community (Twitter, Facebook).

Once you are active within social networks you need to determine how you are performing and calculate your ROI (Return On Investment).

Measuring Social Networks in Google Analytics

By default Google Analytics allows us to track visitors from social network via referral source (or which social networking site linked to your site). You can view visits from social networks within the All Traffic Sources report (located under Traffic Sources).

Begin by searching for the top social networking site, this can be acheived by using the filter (or search) at the very bottom of the report.



Once you have established your primary social networking referrals you can input multiple social media domain names into the filter option. Then you can begin to compare the true value of your social networking efforts.

• Do basic engagement metrics differ between networks?
• Are social network visitors converting for your goals?
• And more importantly; how do conversion rates compare?

The following image highlights the ecommerce conversion rates between 4 social networking sites. We can now see that Twitter is driving the highest conversion rate, therefore if we focus our efforts on driving more traffic from Twitter we should see even more revenue being generated.



In this example we could aim to increase Twitter visitors by 50% or 100% which would result in additional revenue of $37,886.85 to $75,773.69 - more than enough to cover a member of your team Tweeting an hour a day!

Google Analytics allows you to measure metrics for visitors accessing your site from social networks in quantitative terms, but it is also important to understand the qualitative value of your efforts.

Drilling Deeper into Social Networking Visitors using Google Analytics

Okay, now that you have the basics down you can start to get deeper into your Google Analytics social networking data.

Creating a social networking advanced segment will allow you to see this level of detail throughout the majority of Google Analytics reports.

Creating an Advanced Segment for Social Networks:

1. Navigate to Advanced Segments
2. Click 'Create new custom segment'
3. Search or browse for 'Source' within the Dimensions options
4. Click and drag 'Source' over to the custom segment builder
5. Select 'Matches regular expression' as the condition
6. Enter your social networks (we have used twitter\.com|flickr\.com|youtube\.com|digg\.com)
7. Name your segment
8. Test your segment to ensure it works
9. And finally, click 'Create Segment'

You should end up with the following:



Now when you apply your custom advanced segment your Google Analytics reports will only include visitors coming from the social networking sites you have defined.

Posted by Daniela Fernandez and Benjamin Mangold, Analytics Team

Labels: Google Analytics, Google Analytics and Social Networks, Google Analytics Tips