NTEN’s Google Analytics Webinar: The Cliff Notes Version

Last week’s NTEN webinar on Google Analytics reached capacity FAST. Great for NTEN (they really know what the hot topics are huh) but a bummer for the people who didn’t get to register.

But have no fear! You can check out the recorded version and/or get the cliff notes version here.

The first thing to know is that the updates made to Google Analytics aren’t in its function. They deal with the user interface and overall organization (which means the great tips for understanding the data that you’ve been getting from Alissa are still relevant).

You can check out the upgrades very simply. When you are logged in to Google Analytics, up in the top right corner you’ll see “new version.” Just click there to take it for a test drive.

Now for the biggest, and in some ways, coolest changes.

• Settings: Instead of clicking on the website profile’s name to adjust your settings, you now click on the little gear up in the top right. These settings include things like your goals and alerts.
• Tabs: Along the top of the page are four tabs to help you quickly navigate between commonly used functions. Specifically, dashboard, my site, my conversions and custom reports.
• Browser & OS: In the old version, these were two different reports. Now they are one combined report.
• Keywords: “Keywords” is no longer an option in the navigation (but don’t worry! You can still get the data!). It is now under Traffic Sources, Search. You can see three reports: overview, organic and paid. In any of those just click “keyword” underneath the line graph.
• Ad Words: Now includes new tracking features like bounce rates.
• Navigation: In the old version when you left a category in the navigation, its whole submenu closed. Now you can have multiple navigation menus open at once. So much faster to toggle.
• Timeline: This is probably my personal favorite. In addition to setting custom timelines (like April 4-April 11) there are now some quick links to common timelines like “last month” or “last week.” When on the first of the month I’m looking at reports for the month prior, I’m definitely going to be pleased to just click “last month” instead of resetting my custom timeline. I know; lazy.

And finally what is being called the most important change of all: multichannel funnel.

The multichannel funnel function (under the My Conversions tab from the account home) helps you understand all the different components that played a part in achieving a conversion. Why is this so important? Let’s use a basketball analogy. Sure, one guy makes the basket and he’s valuable. But the guy who gets the rebound, dribbles the ball down the court and passes it to him is a valuable assisting player. The multichannel funnel function helps you more easily figure out who your valuable assisting players are online. And in turn this helps you direct your energy and genius not just to the webpage that sends people to your donation form, but to the page that gets them to that one.

OK that’s it for the cliff notes version of the Google Analytics upgrades. Remember if you want all the details from the webinar, you can listen to the recorded version.