New Google Analytics: An example of user-centred design

 – posted May 9th, 2007 by Brian Donohue     Comments (6)

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It’s finally launched. Google has completely overhauled the interface of Google Analytics (GA), and they’ve now finally made it public. Back in March, Clodagh and I had a sneak preview of the new GA in Google’s offices in Dublin, and we’ve had a couple of weeks since then to use the Beta version. It’s been hard to keep our mouths shut on this one, it’s so impressive.

They got the best to revamp it

You might remember a while back that Google bought MeasureMap, a brand new web analytics application that Jeff Veen, from Adaptive Path, headed up. When Google acquired MeasureMap (which I don’t think was ever publicly launched), they also wrestled Jeff, which was a coup, as Jeff is one of the big names in the user experience industry. In other words, Google got a guy who would do this the right way. From what I heard from some of the GA team, Jeff spent most of his time actually interviewing users — understanding what they needed, and why. It wasn’t until towards of the project that they actually started designing the new interface. In other words, when you look at the new GA, you’re seeing a true example of user-centred design.

So what’s new?

This version focuses almost exclusively on the front-end. It’s the same data being collected, but how you access and view that data is now different. There was a real effort to try to bubble up the critical data, so that the standard dashboards are genuinely useful.

Some highlights of the new features:

  • You can now create custom dashboards, adding and removing reports to a central area.
  • You can email reports, adding in your own comments, and you can schedule those reports to go out automatically on a regular basis.

  • There are landing page optimisation reports and improved navigational analysis reports
  • The time choose widget is really nifty

Take the tour

Really, though, almost everything looks different. The best thing to do is to take a look at Google’s video tour.

You can also read the launch announcement on the official Google Analytics blog.

Categories Web analytics

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