We’re big fans of Google Analytics. It’s a very powerful (free!) tool that allows you to see in-depth insights about your website visitors. You can find out how people found your site, what they looked at, how long they stayed, what browser they were using and much more. If you run a website of any kind, you absolutely should have Google Analytics installed on there.
This morning Google has rolled out a nice update to the Analytics interface, including some of the following enhancements:
Rearranged Tabs
The tabs on the left side of the screen have been shuffled around a bit, in a way that makes much more sense. There is a greater emphasis on the new dashboards and shortcuts, as well as a more obvious location for the Real-Time reporting seen here:
Custom Dashboards
As we mentioned above, the dashboards area is now more obvious and easy to customize. When customizing your dashboard you have a variety of new layout options, seen below, as well as a few new available widgets including “Geo Maps” and “Bars”.
Setting up a powerful dashboard can save you a lot of time, as you won’t need to dig through as many tabs to find the information that you need.
Floating top navigation
This one is fairly minor, but quite handy — as you scroll down the screen, the orange bar now floats at the top of the screen rather than scrolling out of view.
So far I’m really liking this update, and I’m finding the new Shortcuts to be quite convenient as well. I have a handful of tabs that I often view when I’m looking at a site, and this allows me to put all of those views in one location for quick access.
These updates are rolling out now and you should see them in your Analytics account. Do you use Google Analytics? What do you think of the changes they just made?
