Mountain View, California — Google Analytics has become an indispensable service and is used by a significant number of online publishers and businesses for tracking how internet users are interacting with their websites. Now the life of the average Google Analytics user is about to witness a new innovation. Internet search engine behemoth Google is introducing a new tool that should allow people to stop juggling through pages upon pages of numbers, graphs and obscure terminology or dealing with older, less sophisticated tools. The new In-Page Analytics feature provides a simple and intuitive way of analyzing your site’s traffic.
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But data is data, and visualizing how Google Analytics data relates to specific pages can be a difficult task. However, the newly announced In-Page Analytics feature should make the service more accessible and usable, especially for people who do not spend all their time studying Web traffic and search engine optimization.
“Today, we are excited to share with you a bit of what we have been working on to address this problem,” Trevor Claiborne, Google Analytics Team, wrote.
“We are rolling out a new feature into beta: In-Page Analytics. With In-Page Analytics, you can view your Google Analytics data superimposed on your website as you browse,” he announced.
But it takes a little while to become fully acquainted with the service, since it is all about analyzing screen after screen filled with numbers and slightly wonky terminology like “bounce rate” and “landing page”.
As you can see in the video below, the new In-Page Analytics feature overlays Google Analytics data on the actual webpage, which replaces Site Overlay, empowering users to see data superimposed right over different products or design elements.
And as described in the video below, there are plenty of ways to fine-tune the readouts and view more details. So, for instance, while flipping through a particular page on your website, In-Page Analytics will display “bubbles” detailing what percentage of clicks each link on the page generated. When clicked, these bubbles can provide additional data, such as goal conversion metrics.
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One of the crispiest features of In-Page Analytics is integration with advanced segments. With a couple of clicks, it is possible to visualize how different types of visitors are interacting with a page. If you are particularly interested in how paid traffic is interacting with a particular page, for instance, it is easy to visualize this using In-Page Analytics and advanced segments.
Furthermore, especially for a complex site with a lot of traffic, the data can easily become overwhelming so Google built in a number of filters to help users narrow down on the data they need. For instance, you can see the labels of the links that get at least an amount of usage. You can also focus on a segment of the demographic, depending on region for example, or on the more technical aspects such as browser and screen resolution.
This looks quite promising, and Claiborne, suggested on the Google Analytics Blog, “Take In-Page for a spin and let us know what you think.”
Claiborne continued with a caveat, “In-Page Analytics is still in beta, so some things in the report may not work perfectly yet.” Also, “In-Page is currently available for all English users of Google Analytics.”
The new In-Page Analytics tool is available in the Content section and is still labeled as beta, so there may be some small issues. Google has a habit of releasing everything in beta so it should not matter too much. But Google sure to continue refining the feature over time, though, and Claiborne hinted that the Google Analytics Team has some bigger tricks up its sleeve.
Overall, In-Page Analytics is a feature that many Google Analytics users will likely come to use on a regular basis, and it is probably a good idea to get on good terms with In-Page Analytics as soon as possible in order to prepare for those changes and the holiday shopping season.