Google Universal Analytics

Google Universal Analytics is the new face of GA. Gone are the days of exclusively web based reporting as GA evolves into a universal reporting platform.

GUA Status

The current universal tool is in beta, it will take some time for all the features to be implemented but so far it is already an improvement by moving many options that used to be specified in the tracking snippet into the administrator interface. With the new tools for adjusting campaign timeout and keyword exclusion, it has become a little easier to manage your properties.

Dimension Widening

It is now possible to create your own dimensions, which will allow new metrics like walk-ins, and loyalty card swipes. A great example of the power of GUA is the caffeine tracker that Loves Data put together.

Phone Tracking

Do you have an automated phone system in place for your customers? Now you can report on that information through GA and gain some keen insights on how customers are moving through your phone services.

Implementation

To start experimenting with the new Google Universal Analytics it is necessary to create a new property as a Universal Analytics web property and run it parallel to your current GA tracking code. Don't worry! It won't mess up your data! But it may be a good idea to consult your clients before installing anyway.

Why Worry About it Now?

It is a good idea to be proactive when it comes to GA because of the non-transferable, non-historic nature of the beast. Google has made no guarantees that it will offer a migration feature so it will be a good idea to start collecting history as of now.

Google IO - Updates Trickling Down

More Wood Behind Fewer Arrows

The IO is long over as I write this article, but as I look at my Google services, Drive, Gmail, etc; I cannot help but be excited for all of the attention they are paying to their platforms. There was a general sense that  the software titan is refocusing it's assets to create a consistent experience across the board.

Google Drive Changes

Fifteen Gigabytes for each user across their various accounts means that Google is now the leader of free storage crushing Box's 5 Gig limit and appealing to our sense of utility. After all, who uses 10 gigabytes of space on their Gmail account? I believe the new limit also applies to Google App engine which is something to keep in mind for users that are toying around with AE.

Geo-Fencing

One of the big changes for developers is the opening up of the Geo-Fencing API. This allows apps to interact with their users in the context of location like never before. As these tools become more and more accessible they will also yield better results! This technology is going to shine with the advancement of their new low power location systems. I haven't seen any case studies yet but I am sure they are coming through soon.

Hangouts

Did you scramble to play with the new Hangouts app after the keynote? I know I did! I was pleased with the unification of chat across all services and the sleek UI changes. There will definitely be some problems activating a community around the text chatting portion of Hangouts over the more open XMPP platforms that plug into Pidgin and Adium. My thought is that Google chrome should install Hangouts Chat by default - then Google will in essence gain the same user acquisition strategy as Facebook - "the general idea being, you are already here, why not chat?". Implementation would have to be carefully managed to keep the browser experience as clean as possible, but just speaking for myself - I have been enjoying the chrome Hangouts app as is.

Search

The search titan is striving to make the computer as cool as it is in classic Star Trek episodes. Chrome's Google Now feature is being updated, and the engine is being geared towards conversational searches through dictation and memory rather than the classic typing input. No word on when exactly the changes are going through, but I am certain we will be chatting up Google in the next weeks.

Page Speed

An important asset in your website optimization toolbox is page speed analysis. There are two ways to analyze your page speed, there is a very useful plugin for all major browsers from Google Developers that automatically assesses your website and makes suggestions based off of the images you serve, any excessive redirects, or whether or not browser caching is enabled.

The second way to analyze your page load time is by using pingdom as a critical path explorer. This provides a gantt like chart that illuminates potential problems ranging from un-minified CSS and JavaScript to over-sized images and possible DNS errors.

Below are the links to these two tools, keep in mind that there are many other page speed analysis tools on the market and many times they will give you different results dependent on where the server is located geographically.

https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/
http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/