New Google Analytics Features Announced

It’s all change at Google Analytics. Today saw the roll out of a range of new features. These new updates have been released under the catchy tag line of Powerful. Flexible. Intelligent. However what does this fancy marketing speak really mean? Is it possible that we are seeing a re-positioning of Google Analytics?

Well maybe. Originally aimed at the low level user who wanted to have free easy to use site statistics, Google has always positioned GA as the solution for the small to medium level user. However with the roll out of these new features Google may just be looking to capture the bigger fish! And who would blame them? With the acquisition of Omniture by Adobe earlier this month maybe they see an opportunity to attract the more enterprise level users.

But what are these updates and what do they mean for you, the existing GA user. Well, you’ll be pleased to know that the product is still free. However there are a number of juicy enhancements.

The new features come under three heading – Powerful. Flexible. Intelligent.

So what is more powerful about GA? Well, you’ll be able to track where your users connect with your site with enhanced mobile reporting. With the dramatic increase in web enabled mobile devices, Google has enhanced their tool to be able to tell you the who, what and why of the mobile devices that are being used to visit your site.

You’ll also be able to tell how engaged with your site they are once they get there with the addition of expanded goals. The expanded goals will enable you to rate user-based metrics such as, how many pages people visited, what pages they visited or how long they stayed. This added knowledge will give insight into how engaged users are with your site.

GA will also be more flexible by allowing you to set up multiple custom variables. You will be able to categorize users on your site by what they do so you can see which types of users convert or perform better for you. As well as this you’ll be able to share the custom segments you set up and report templates allowing others in your organization to share the same reporting tools as you.

But most of all, GA will be more Intelligent. In what is the first of a phased roll out, Google will be launching their ‘Intelligence’ tool. In a nutshell, this tool will be able to monitor your site for statistically different changes in your site data. Now GA will be able to tell you what metrics you should be looking at to assess your sites performance and make actions from them. The tool will monitor your site metrics and dimensions over daily, weekly or monthly periods and tell you if there are any positive or negative changes that you should be made aware of.

These changes were announced and released at 3pm EST today and they are sure to be the first of many. We’ll be blogging about them more on the 6S Blog, so be sure to check back to keep up to date with the new Powerful, Flexible and Intelligent Google Analytics.