Urchin 6 is Now Google Analytics

Newfangled has been providing Urchin website traffic stats to our clients for several years. Our July 2004 newsletter, "Analyzing Website Traffic," provides an overview of how Urchin works and how to review its reports to glean important insights into a site's performance. This month's newsletter won't be a comprehensive review of Urchin 6 since all the standard information from Urchin 5 is still part of the new system.

Urchin provides a critical perspective on website traffic patters and trends. In contrast to Newfangled's custom tracking system, Urchin provides a bird's eye view of site trends. It offers a vast amount of information detailing overall site usage. (Newfangled's tracking system is a worm's eye view following particular instances and specific user sessions... see "Advanced Website Tracking Tools" for details).

Urchin 6 (now Google Analytics) was a long-awaited upgrade that was worth the wait. One basic improvement is live stats, which compile access logs on the fly rather than only compiling nightly. Many of Urchin's upgrades focus on tools that improve measuring return on investment for pay-per-click search engine ads and other online marketing campaigns. But because Newfangled is more intent on improving organic search engine results, I won't be reviewing the marketing and goal-setting features (though they are impressive). Instead, I'll be covering three new features that will be helpful to all websites, whether they purchase AdWords or not.

The Google Analytics has innovative new features that make a huge difference in how we understand website traffic patterns. I was going to save the best feature for last, but the Site Overlay feature is SOooo COOL I just can't wait. Under the "Navigational Analysis" section of Google Analytics is a report called "Site Overlay." When viewing this report it loads your website into its proprietary "browser" that is built into the system. As you look at your site in Analytics, it overlays a graphic bar next to each link on the page. The bar graph represents the frequency each link has been clicked from that page. Clicking the bar displays more detail, reports exactly how many times the link has been clicked, and shows its overall click percentage. It's like retracing the footsteps your visitors took as they visited your site.

A cursory review of the Site Overlay applied to the Newfangled site shows how effective it is. When I looked at the footprints from the Newfangled home page, I saw that the overwhelming majority of my site visitors follow one of two paths from my homepage. They either go to the pricing page or to the portfolio. I knew from our previous reports that these two pages were among the most popular pages on my site. I did not know that they were hit so directly and consistently from the homepage... so much so that all of the other content was being overlooked. The Site Overlay report demonstrated to me that if I don't make the case of Newfangled's differentiators on these two very specific pages, I will lose my opportunity. As it is, most of our differentiators are found in our "Invention" section, which in contrast to the pricing and portfolio pages is almost completely ignored from the homepage. Alas, it's time to sharpen the axe again... stay tuned.

The second feature that is useful for any and every website is the Web Design Parameters report. These reports have been significantly expanded. The new underlying technology to Google Analytics has been upgraded so they are able to report on very specific browser and platform standards that were not possible using the old technical approach.

Newfangled specializes in partnering with advertising agencies and design firms. As a result, we often field questions that significantly affect website design such as browser support, screen resolutions, platforms, and download speeds. We've usually answered these questions with our observations of general trends. Google Analytics provides specific user stats for browser platform combinations, screen resolutions, and even download speeds. We can now look at a report and provide an exact percentage of how many visitors were using dial up. We can also determine the exact screen resolutions all visitors were using. The Newfangled.com site has almost 12% of its visitors that still use what we consider to be a minimum 800 x 600 screen resolution. Additionally, we can review which versions of JavaScript are being used and which versions of Flash our visitors have installed. All of these metrics have significant influence on how we design and what browsers we support. Such decisions can be critical... especially browser support and download speed.

The third new useful feature in Google Analytics is the Cross Segment Performance drop down. Many of the report screens provide further detail for each item listed in a report. Clicking on the "more detail" arrow reveals further breakdown including the "Cross Segment Performance" option. This option allows you to refine results based on almost 20 different cross sections. For example, if you were to list the most common platforms report you could refine the "Windows" line by other criteria, among which are the JavaScript versions used by Windows visitors.

Such granular detail helps weigh website design and maintenance decisions. For example, we might use it to determining whether or not it makes sense to "fix" a "bug" that occurs in rare browser/platform/version combinations. On the web it is inevitable that some technical functions or visual display features will not work properly under certain rare browser/platform/version combinations. However, when such rare occurrences are reported to a client, it can meet with considerable client anxiety. In reality, however, not all "website bugs" are truly bugs. Sometimes they are well known browser flaws that cannot be fixed - at least not without significant effort. Nevertheless, an email that reports a strange display issue or broken feature can cause a client can think their entire site is broken. But by simply identifying the basis for the problem and providing the client with an exact percentage of users that have such a combination that would cause the glitch can help them determine whether or nor it is worth fixing. In most cases the percentage is so small and caused by such old technology, that the "problem" can safely be ignored. Without specific detail, however, the client may remain quite nervous. It's amazing how much difference an answer like "0.13% of visitors will experience this problem due to their use of Internet Explorer 4.1 which is over six years old," can assuage fear so much more than an answer like "very few people still use older browsers."

By the way, in recent newsletters we've covered significant changes and new initiatives that Google has been pursuing. We've praised their innovative and simple approach to technology. They have a real good eye for new initiatives and technical advances. They shared our enthusiasm over Urchin's new system and bought the company.