The Killer Web Analytics App
Today I noticed this new Google Analytics feature in Beta called In-Page analytics. Very simply it is the ability to pull up a specific web page and visually see all the clicks, sales, conversion rates and some other stuff by every link on that web page. They have had this around in the past, but not at this quality of usability for zero dollars.
This is not a new feature, in fact, its just Google Analytics catching up with all the enterprise analytics companies in the market such as Omniture/Adobe, Coremetrics/IBM and Webtrends. Is this good news? Great news for users of analytics, because it makes life a lot easier to analyze stuff visually. Well its not good news for the old guard of web analytics as Google chips away at features that used to cost thousands per month. This is basically another step towards devaluation of analytics tools. Not sure how many companies are out there still doing analytics. I remember at a conference when Mr. Stern declared that there were 83 web analytics companies at the time around 2003. And I have seen new ones join the fray in the last few years while old ones like Hitbox have become a thing of the past, being gobbled up with Omniture, which was feasted on by Adobe.
Why Is This In-Page Analytics Different?
Well this in page analytics is not actually as you surf your website. That is a major difference with competitors and how they run. Typically they almost all worked like this. You turned on some application that is local or browser based, so either you download something or click on a new add on per a browser and then surf the site. This required a lot of effort to surf around and honestly the in page analytics I used by Omniture/Adobe and Coremetrics/IBM hardly worked. In fact even their staff steered us away from it. This new Google In-Page Analytics has really created a great feature, where it grabs the page from the website and it all seems to work… Nice.
How To Use In-Page Analytics
Quite simple to use. Just login to your google analytics account and click on CONTENT in the left side bar and you will see a red BETA next to In-Page Analytics. Once you click on In-Page Analytics you will notice that your home page shows up. Notice that links have a little div/verbiage above them with a stat like 1% or 50%. That stat and others are showing you what percentage have clicked through, purchased, and how much they have purchased.
Hitting It Out Of The Park
So this proverbial Holy Grail of web analytics seems to do all and suffer none when changing to use revenue, goals, or any other analytics. Yes, the bigger enterprise solutions do have more bells and whistles and flexibility when it comes to in-page analytics, but you have to admit this is pretty much an amazing tool. You could quickly look over your home page or any page and make a determination visually what link is working well and what does not work well. This turns web analytics into a real science and brings this cool method to the masses.