Google Analytics more powerful and intelligent.

As an authorized Google Analytics Consultant (GAAC) we were invited at the GooglePlex in Mountain View (CA) to preview the brand new features, but we had to keep our lips sealed under NDA.

By all means it was worth it and today Avinash Kaushik presented them at eMetrics Washington DC. Below are some of my favorite features:

Analytics Intelligence and  Custom Alerts

The most exciting of these new features is a set of reports called “Analytics Intelligence”.

The “intelligence” provides automatic alerts of significant changes in the data patterns of your site metrics and dimensions over daily, weekly and monthly periods. Resulting in less time spend monitoring manually and more time to do things useful things.

However, don’t expect the tool to do your analysis! The tool doesn’t know your business as you, or your consultants, do. There is still much need for ‘human’ intelligence and analytical skilss.

Expanded Mobile Reporting

You can now track mobile websites and mobile apps to better measure your mobile marketing efforts. If you’re optimizing content for mobile users and have created a mobile website, Google Analytics can track traffic to your mobile website from all web-enabled devices, whether or not the device runs JavaScript.

And coming soon, you’ll be able to see breakout data on mobile devices and carriers in the new Mobile reports in the Visitors section!

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!

BUT! The danger here is that you will lose your focus, and start defining goals for ‘less useful’ events. We always advice our clients to focus on 3 KPIs, and optimize and analyze the conversion paths (on site and other channels) based on these figures. Trust us, you need to focus! 

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.  With this feature, users can classify any number of interactions on the site into  trackable segments. For example you can now define and track visitors according to visitor attributes (e.g. member vs. non-member), session attributes (e.g. logged-in or not), and by page-level attributes (e.g. viewed Sports section).

We especially celebrate this enhancement! We really had a clear need for extra parameters especially to create new visitor segments. This will also allow you to create drill-down reports based on this extra parameters. We’ll publish some fine examples on this blog later on.

Website Optimizer – Over time charts

With over time charts you can see the cumulative conversion rate of each combination over the life of an experiment. This can give you a better understanding of how your site is performing. The new charts are available for all Website Optimizer experiments, and you’ll find them on the reports page.

In addition, Google will also luanch an API for the Google Website Optimizer, which will allow you to integrate the tagging (without touching your website code) and the data into your CMS in order to create a ‘more or less’ automated platform.

Overtime Charts

Other new features are:

• Advanced Analysis Features
• Share Segments and Custom Report Templates
• Unique Visitors as a new metric in Custom Reports

With the above new additions Google Analytics / Website Optimizer positions itself as a “powerful, flexible, and intelligent” enterprise-level analytics platform (more details at their blog) .

More features also means more data to investigate, more questions and more reporting capabilities. As an authorized Google Partner, These Days offers Google consulting services to help you properly configure, analyze and optimize your visitors online measurement to deliver insights that help you to increase conversions, page views, and revenue.

And to finish a small quote by Avinash  ”HITS: How Idiots Track Success”.