EXCITING! That’s how as an analyst i can describe the first day of Google Analytics summit 2013. That’s because Google has announced launch of 14 new features to be rolled out gradually this year. Some of them are pretty amazing and will empower analysts to take greater insights from GA.
2013 was a big year for Google Analytics, with 70+ feature launches. Expect even more this year,as Google Analytics isn’t going to slow down – they’re going to accelerate. In GA summit-2013, Mr. Babak Pahlavan (Director of Product Management, Google) announces 14 new features to be introduced in GA. This year’s theme of the Summit is Access, Empower and Act. Let see how these new features will help us to Access, Empower and Act.
Access data
1. Automated Event Tracking in Google Tag Manager
Tracking of important events will be much easier as GTM will get automatic event tracking capabilities. It means that you’ll no longer need to edit any HTML pages to track event interactions with them. Our resident expert Bhoomika Joshi thinks that this is a fantastic addition and it will save great amount of time for developers.
2. Enterprise SLA for Google Tag Manager
For GA premium customers, Google is rolling out Service Level Agreement for Google Tag Manager this year.Google Tag Manager will soon be covered by the robust SLA offered for GA Premium users.
3. Universal Analytics Upgrade Path
This feature was long demanded by GA partners since launch of Universal Analytics. And now it’s here.
From now on, we will be able to upgrade an existing Google Analytics “classic” property to the new Universal Analytics platform without any data loss.
4. Account Management API for User Access Management
This feature will be effective for larger organizations. Companies will be able to manage users in Google Analytics through a programmatic API.IT teams can programmatically setup and configure Google Analytics accounts. It will save great amount of time and efforts
Empower to Analyze
5. New ABC Report (Acquisition Overview)
Most of us use AvinashKaushik’sAcquisition-Behavior-Conversion (ABC) cycle to analyze any web site. But, from now you don’t need to do much of hard work to generate such reports. It is now available in GA itself .They will replace the ‘Traffic’ Sources’ section on the left hand navigation.
6. Unified Segments Tool
This has already launched earlier this year. This update includes user segmentation, cohort analysis, sequence segments, segment templates and a fully refreshed UI.
7. Demographic Reporting Built in to Google Analytics
This is my personal favorite. For any marketer it is very very important to know demographics of its customers. And yes, it is now available in GA. Now you can access Demographic report in GA. This feature will help to know your visitors by their age, gender and other demographics. Isn’t this awesome!
8. Audience data within unified segments
It is also possible to segment the data based on the demographics as well. It will surely provide greater insights to digital marketers.
9.BigQuery Integration with Google Analytics*
This feature will be exclusive for GA premium users only. Now premium users can export GA data in to BigQuery. This will help in BigQueryanalyzing more granular and complex unsampled data. This is just an official announcement by Google as it has already been launched it May’13. It will include a $500 per month credit for BigQuery billing.
Take Action
10. DoubleClick Campaign Manager (DFA) Integration with Google Analytics Premium*
It allows you to see the impact of all your display campaigns on your business. It allows you to see View through, click through, impression and conversion tracking right within Google Analytics Premium. This feature is for premium users only.
11. DCM/DFA data in Multi-Channel and Attribution Modeling reports*
Now you can see the inclusion of DCF data in to MCF in premium versions. This will be used for data driven attribution modeling. You’ll even get to see impressions in the conversion funnel path across visits within the Multi-Channel Funnel reports and Attribution Modeling reports.
12. Google Play Referral Flow Reports
This feature allows integration between Google Analytics and Google Play. This is especially exciting for app developers and marketers because it’s the first time –and the only way – to get a holistic view of the Play acquisition funnel.
13. Analytics Academy
From this October, Google Analytics is launching an Analytics Academy, or “MOOC’s” (Massive Open Online Courses). This is a great resource for digital marketers. It will really help in understanding the core principles of digital analytics.It’s Free, online and high quality training content for Google Analytics.
14. Improved In-Product Materials & Videos
This will be available within GA user interface itself. These specific training videos will give you great understanding on different products and feature.
This is a brief overview of features announced by GA be introduced gradually in 2014. And please note that this list is just some of the features that have been announced. You can expect even more features in the up coming days. So be ready for more changes.
Looking at this announcement and the way GA is moving forward, i believe that now Google is aiming to make people more aware on analytics. These great resources will make learning Analytics much easier. Thus,analysts now have to dig deeper in to data to find meaningful insights that will help business to achieve higher ROA.
