We’re proud to announce the launch of a dramatically streamlined user experience for managing Google Analytics administrative settings! When visiting the Analytics Admin tab, you will now find all major settings readily accessible from this new landing page. As we launch over the coming weeks, here’s what you’ll see:

Google Store admin shown as a sample (click above image for full-size)

Settings are organized into columns corresponding to the most prominent objects in Analytics: accounts, properties, and views (formerly called profiles). A single account, property, and view will be selected, and you may change these via the drop downs atop each column. We are also renaming profiles to views to most closely match the present and future meaning of what this object represents: a view of the data Analytics collected for your property.

We’ve made a number of additional enhancements. To create a new account, property, or view, click the appropriate menu in the column heading and you’ll see an option to create a new object. You can load any settings page by clicking the appropriate name or icon. You'll notice animations that simplify the display of information, and you'll see new headers along with new navigational links on the left.

Help content has moved to the “Help” tab near the top right corner of the page. We’ve also refreshed the help content to make account administration easy to understand.

This is a large change over the old administrative user experience. For example, getting to property settings now takes just one click but used to take three. Simply compare the new look and feel above to the old:

Experience simplified navigation, faster account configuration, and the power of having all settings at your fingertips.

Posted by Scott Bailey and Matt Matyas, Google Analytics Team

Register for next week’s webinar: Register here

In many ways, Google Analytics and AdWords were made for each other. AdWords helps advertisers reach an audience and reports on advertising performance, and Google Analytics can tell you what actions your users take when they actually get to your site. You may have a high clickthrough rate (CTR) in AdWords, but what if you could see that 70% of those users left immediately after arriving on your landing page? While understanding the conversion rate of AdWords ads is critical, it’s also important to understand what happened to the users that did not convert or complete the action you wanted them to. For example, did users ‘bounce’ after landing on your site or did they view a few other pages and then leave? How much time did they spend on your site? Which keywords drive the majority of your Ecommerce revenue?

Thanks to built-in Google product integrations that provide unique insights into your data, you can view reporting and data in Google Analytics that directly relates back to your advertising in AdWords. Understanding how to use both of them together will help you refine your AdWords campaigns and improve the performance of your business.


Next Tuesday, join Rachel Witalec and Simon Rosen, Global Sales Strategy Leads, for a detailed look at how to use Google Analytics and AdWords together. In this webinar, we'll show you why it's important to link your Google Analytics and AdWords accounts, how to see both Google Analytics data in AdWords and AdWords data in Google Analytics, and walk through a live demo of the reports and how to use them. You'll learn how to make your marketing more effective by analyzing Google Analytics data, such as bounce rate, pages per visit, conversion rate, and Ecommerce revenue in conjunction with AdWords factors, such as keyword performance, ad copy, ad groups, and more. The webinar will also include a live Q&A section.

Date: Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Time: 10am PDT / 1pm EDT/ 6pm GMT
Duration: 1 hr
Level: 101 / Beginner
Register: Register here

Posted by Sara Jablon Moked, Google Analytics team

Last Thursday, we held a webinar discussing how to effectively measure the customer’s journey in a multi-device world. We focused on high-level best practices and strategies, as well as how Google Analytics and other Google tools can help you measure and respond to the evolving customer journey.

Watch the webinar video here to learn more about:

• Holistic, full-credit, and active measurement
• Everyday strategies to improve your measurement and marketing performance
• Basic techniques for marketing attribution
• Google Analytics features and tools for measuring the full customer journey

During the webinar, we received dozens of great questions from viewers. Read on below for responses to some of the most common questions we received.

Questions and Answers

What other blogs would you recommend for advice on measurement best practices?

Avinash Kaushik is the author of Web Analytics 2.0 and Web Analytics: An hour a day. On his blog, he discusses how to use digital marketing and measurement to focus on the customer while maintaining your ROI.

Justin Cutroni is the author of Google Analytics, Performancing Remarketing with Google Analytics, and Google Analytics Shortcut. He uses his experience as a consultant to guide his blog topics. His blog provides readers with techniques for using Google Analytics to maximize their marketing strategies.

Where can I find the “Think Insights” website referenced during the webinar?

Visit www.google.com/think for access to all sorts of statistics and articles about the latest trends in customer behavior. To learn more about the customer journey to online purchase, view the interactive benchmarking tool here.

How does marketing attribution help with intra-channel optimization?

Marketing attribution can help you to optimize intra-channel campaigns by allowing you to see value for each of the specific moments in the customer journey that you may be addressing within that single channel. For example, if you are running a search campaign, you may think about the role that different types of keywords play at different moments to help generate awareness for your brand, move the customer to consider your product, or to help close the deal. Using tools such as AdWords Search Funnels, you can determine where in the customer path those keywords had an impact, and this can help you optimize your keyword mix.

What are first-click and last-click attribution models?

The first and last clicks are important parts of two  commonly used attribution models, the “first interaction” attribution model and the “last interaction” attribution model. Depending on which model you use, all credit for the sale (or conversion) is attributed to either the first or last click. In the “first interaction” model, the first touch point would receive 100% of the credit for the sale. In the “last interaction” model, the last touch point receives 100% of the credit. Historically, many businesses have relied on the last-click model alone, but since this model (like the first-click model) only addresses a single touch-point along the customer journey, it may miss other important marketing interactions.

There is no one specific model that will work for every business or every program within your business. Rather, you should explore different models and experiment to see which model or combination of models best fits your needs. Check out Google Analytics Multi-Channel Funnels and Attribution Modeling to get started.

What are some tips for measuring the customer journey with Universal Analytics?

Consider integrating Universal Analytics with all of your digital touchpoints (see some examples in this post). Here are a few use cases that our Certified Partners are already implementing to measure the customer journey beyond web:

• Integrated measurement and analysis of in-store POS systems along with desktop and mobile e-commerce platforms.
• Measuring offline macro and micro conversions through physical buttons or integration with CRMs.
• Measuring physical interactions -- for example at display booths at conventions or artworks at major exhibitions -- through to online engagement with associated websites.

Posted by Sara Jablon Moked & Adam Singer, Google Analytics Team

Our Analytics API enables marketers and developers to experiment and build new tools powered by Google Analytics. Over the past year, we’ve listened to your feedback and made improvements to the API such as expanding data points available and integrating with Apps Script. Our goal is to provide the most flexible and useful Analytics API on the web enabling you to do everything from build great apps to automate / expedite busywork. 

Today, we’re excited to share the launch of an API for Content Experiments — our tool for easily testing site content with programmatic optimization to achieve Analytics objectives. This API makes Google Analytics a full-blown A/B testing platform where developers of all types can leverage the power of Google Analytics to run their experiments. By utilizing our multi-armed bandit approach, you can maximize results by efficiently determining which assets on your site perform best to offer an improved experience for users. Multi-armed bandit experiments are powerful and efficient tools and with the new Content Experiments API, you can get even more from them.

The Content Experiments API allows you to pick and choose from all the testing functionality Google Analytics has to offer and to combine it into powerful solutions that best fit your particular needs:

Testing changes to content without redirects. 

The original Content Experiments JavaScript snippet made testing a breeze. To keep things simple and consistent for all publishers, the snippet causes a page redirect which may take away from the end user experience in certain cases. Now, with the new Content Experiments API, testing changes to content without redirects is both possible and easy to implement.

Testing items server-side such as the result set of a database query.

Major testing platforms typically offer changes on the client-side but not server side. With Content Experiments API you can now run tests on the server side and try things like implementing different recommendation or search algorithms to determine what works best for your site.

Testing with your own variation selection logic and use Google Analytics for reporting.

While the multi-armed bandit approach to experimentation is one of Content Experiments most powerful features, there are times where publishers and developers would prefer to decide for themselves how to serve variations - be it evenly or using proprietary logic. The Content Experiments API makes it possible for you to bypass our programmatic optimization while allowing you to continue to enjoy the powerful experiment reporting Google Analytics provides.  

Testing in non-web environments using measurement protocol.

For example, if you have a kiosk in your physical location (such as airline terminal or retail store) you can test different layout variations of content and features and determine what users can complete quickest or at highest value.

Developers are already putting the Content Experiments API to work and we’ve been hearing great feedback. Paras Chopra, Founder & CEO of  Visual Website Optimizer reports:

"We're thrilled about the possibilities opening up with the new Content Experiments API. This new API is specially designed to infuse the powers of Google Analytics into testing and experimentation domain. We're very proud to be one of the beta-testers with Google and soon we will start rolling out the integration of Visual Website Optimizer with Google Content Experiments across our joint customer base. When Google releases an API, it's a big move for the A/B testing industry and we're excited to be their launch partners."

Learn how to get started with our Content Experiments API on our developer site or if you’re still new to the platform, get an overview of Content Experiments in our help center.

Happy testing & experimentation! 

Posted by Russell Ketchum, Google Analytics Team

We’re happy to announce you can soon share and collaborate on Google Analytics dashboards!

Dashboards give an overview on how your properties are performing, and are even more powerful as you can create dashboards that you and your teammates can see and edit. Dashboard sharing is a nice complement to dashboard template creation: templates enable creating copies of dashboard configurations, and dashboard sharing enables you to collaborate with your team on a single shared dashboard.

You’ll be able to use this new feature as we roll this out in the coming weeks. At that time, start by creating a dashboard or viewing an existing one and then clicking on the “Share” menu. Look for the new “Share Dashboard” option:

This will make a copy of your dashboard that is available to everyone on the profile.  Private dashboards will be grouped together, and shared dashboards will be as can be seen in the report navigation on the left side of Google Analytics: 

Learn more about dashboard sharing.

Asset Sharing

This marks another enhancement in Google Analytics asset sharing, complementing the sharing capabilities of assets like annotations, advanced segments and custom reports. Google Analytics offers two forms of asset sharing today: creating asset templates, and collaborating on a single asset like we’re launching soon with dashboards. We are listening closely to user feedback on sharing, and planning more sharing features that you will see in the future.

Use dashboard sharing today to work more effectively with your team, and to enable richer reporting and data analysis.

Posted by Matt Matyas, Google Analytics Team

As users discover, download, and use your apps, understanding your customers and what they're doing is incredibly important and has a direct impact on monetization. Leveraging smart analytics and analyzing key metrics can drive future monetization and new app discovery efforts, empowering you to become a smarter and more effective app developer or marketer. In short, your ability to drive maximum value from your app only starts after the download. 

Sign up for our upcoming Webinar and join Google Analytics team members Andrew Wales and Adam Singer as they explore the key metrics to measure for the mobile app ecosystem, as well as learn about the benefits of using Google Analytics for mobile app measurement, such as:

A more powerful mobile SDK

We are providing a new mobile app analytics solution, solving the problem that there is currently no single repository to understand end-to-end value of mobile app users. This is supported by a more powerful mobile SDK (v2.0) that is easy to implement.

“One stop shop” for app measurement

Understanding app performance holistically through acquisition, engagement and outcome is critical to improve mobile app results, optimize user engagement and increase revenue generated. Our new reports show the entire lifecycle and in our Webinar, we’ll explore each section.

Improve ROI and engagement

App developers and brands can make better, more comprehensive data-driven decisions for mobile investments with better reports. For example, marketers can optimize their mobile programs to improve ROI and app developers can improve in-app engagement.

Webinar information:

Title: Metrics for the Mobile App Ecosystem

Date: Wednesday, 6/12/2013 @ 1:00pm EST / 10am PST

Level: 101 - Beginner

Duration: 1 hour

Sign up link: Register here.

Posted by the Google Analytics team

As an analytics practitioner, one of the most important things I try to teach marketers is how to properly tag their campaigns so we can report on the success of their efforts. To do this, I've created a guide for them to follow to make it easy to choose the proper UTM codes to have consistent campaign tagging across the business. This allows us to begin to assign source and medium values to finance channels and usage metrics to really understand how each campaign performs in terms of our bottom line business metrics. 

OVERVIEW
Setting up tracking and reporting on your marketing campaigns is simple and fun. This guide will walk you through the process and demonstrate with a real-life example.

Part A: Set up UTM tracking code

1. Below are all the elements you’ll need. If you set these up correctly, you’ll be able to report on multiple elements of your campaign:

• Campaign -name of your overarching campaign - e.g. spring-2013-collection or summer-2013-announcements. Be sure to follow a consistent campaign naming structure.
• Medium - the medium used to send your campaign. Include “email” for an email campaign, “cpc” for ads, “social” for a social network or “landing-page” if you’re tracking button clicks from a landing page. 
• Source - used to differentiate the type of medium. If medium = cpc, then source may be google, bing, or yahoo. If utm medium = email, source can be used to call out the action (try, buy, coupon, awareness, etc).
• Content - this is essentially a bonus field - it can be used to track many differentiating factors for your campaign. For example, you can use this field to track different versions of your email or landing page - e.g. “60-dollars-off” or “15-percent-off”.

2. Make a copy of this template and update it with your campaign’s values.  You’ll likely end up with several tracking links for your campaign.

3. Tag each version of your campaign creative with the matching link. After updating the values, your tracking link should something like this:

https://www.googlestore.com/?utm_source=coupon&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=summer-sale&utm_content=15-percent-off

Part B: Testing reporting

1. Before launching your campaign, verify that your tags are working correctly. Open an incognito window and click on one of the links you set up to track your campaign. If your campaign’s objective is trial signup, try completing the trial sign up form. If your objective is redeeming a coupon, try redeeming the coupon. Try this with each tag created for your campaign (best practice is to clear your cookies in the incognito window before clicking each tag). For landing pages - make sure to go all the way through to your main site or objective.

• Recommended best practice is to try each link multiple times, dropping off at various points to ensure you can track a funnel flow. 

2. Wait 24 hours (in a crunch data should populate in analytics within 4-6 hours but depends on volume).

3.  Go to google.com/analytics and click Sign in.

4. After signing into analytics you will be on the “Audience Overview” page. Click on “Traffic sources” - > “sources” - > “campaigns”.

5. Type the name of your campaign into the search box in the middle of the page and click on the search icon.

You should now see an overview of all clicks on your campaign. However, since you are in a non-standard report in GA sampling will likely occur (you may not see all - or even any of the test clicks on your campaign). Given sampling,  you may need to export an unsampled report after all filters/segments are applied to your test - see step 9.

Click into this overview.

7. A screen similar to the below should appear, breaking out your campaign performance into different source/medium.

8. To drill down into the different elements of your campaign, click on the “secondary dimension” tab and type in the element - this could be “content” (shown below) or “medium” or “source”.

You will then see your Source/Medium broken down by content. In this example utm_content was used for ad creative, so the Ad Content secondary dimension breaks each Source/Medium down by which creative was clicked.

9. If all of your test campaign metrics are coming up in GA reporting you are ready to launch (be sure to keep track of # of links clicked/steps completed for each test link to match back data). Good luck! And come back to GA to see reports on your live campaign.

Part C: Advanced Reporting

A few more notes on nifty things you can do with GA reporting.

1. Advanced segments enable you to view all data in GA for a target segment in your campaign. 

• Click on “Advanced Segments” at the top of your GA window.  

• Click the button “+new custom segment”
• Using “and” or “or” statements, define the segment of your campaign you want to see GA data for:

• Save the segment. You can now browse through your Analytics reports, viewing data only for this segment 

2. Set up a dashboard. Under “MY STUFF” on the left-hand navigation. Click “Dashboards”. Here you can customize a dashboard for external stakeholders looking to monitor the performance of your campaign.

Happy tagging and analyzing!

Posted by Krista Seiden, Product Marketing Manager, Google Enterprise