Anyone who works with me knows that I love analytics. Messing around on Google Analytics is what I think is fun. But up until now the data from Google Analytics left a lot of stones unturned.
Google announced today that they are unrolling a new Google Analytics platform that promises to be really effective at getting under the hood and find out what’s really happening on your website.
One of the aspects of this new platform is “Real Time” results. As you can see from the screenshot below, website owners will be able to see what’s happening right now on your site:
How we are going to use this data, and what can be derived from it remains to be seen. But I believe that for many site owners, this insight will help them understand not just how people behave on the site, but when they behave on the site as well.
Applications for this kind of data could inform the best time to launch a promotion, for example.
Another “Real Time” reporting tool will help website owners see in more depth and detail where their visitors are coming from:
This will make it much easier for companies that use Social Media to drive traffic to their websites to see how their efforts are paying off as they are happening. The possibilities of how website owners can use this data is endless. For example, imagine being able to see how a Tweet affects your website traffic and being able to build on that momentum in real time.
Lots of other cool features will be part of the new Google Analytics (such as Flow Visualization). I, for one, can’t wait!!
