Google Analytics Version 5 – what’s in it for HiPPOs?

Google has announced a new version of Google Analytics – data nerds are rejoicing about the new features but what does the new version hold for the HiPPOs of the world?  If you need to convince your ‘c-level’ colleagues that the new version of Google Analytics will help improve your business you’ll need three golden nuggets of Web Analytics ‘goodness’ to WOW them with.  Here’s our three favourite HiPPO pleasing features in GA v5:

1: Dashboards in Google Analytics V5

The old style dashboards were…okay…good enough…Meh.  Google Analytics v5 sports many, new, rich, HiPPO delighting dashboard features. GA recently blogged about the features.  HiPPOs love dashboards as they put key metrics at their finger tips.  A great theme runs through GA v5: Business questions are easier to answer faster – dashboards are the first step in that journey of insight discovery.

You can create up to 20 dashboards.

Each dashboard can contain up to 12 widgets.  Widgets are like mini-reports in their own right.  Table, pie, timeline (line graph) and raw metric view are available:

Organise them how you want. Group them into a relevant dashboard. Name the dashboard appropriately: Hover over the dashboard title (see it is highlighted):

Click the title and edit it – simples!

Yup – new dashboards are a good step forward for HiPPOs.

2: GA V5 Speed!

Prior to V5, clicking on a menu item in GA loaded a report.  If you were looking at a chunky date range, this could slow your analysis.  HiPPOs walk away if analysis takes too long.  V5 gives you a really slick menu:

Click a top level menu item to expand the menu and see the second and third level menu items without loading the reports!

3: Term Clouds in GA V5

This is particularly sweet.  Go to the Search overview report in the Traffic Sources menu:

Now, we have paid and organic traffic.  Notice the check boxes next to each row?  Click one (organic, for example) and hit the ‘plot rows’ button:

Neat huh?  Anyway, we digress.  Uncheck the organic row and hit plot rows – reset the report basically (for HiPPO clarity!).  Now, look at the table header – see the View drop down?  Choose ‘Term cloud’:

Wow – HiPPOs can see how paid and organic search volumes differ using a ‘tag cloud’ style view.  So, this is showing visitor volumes.  Perhaps you want to see how the bounce rate or pages/visit varies?

Of course, you can look at the value (HiPPOs love $$$!) of traffic sources:

You can also look at these metrics in a ‘term cloud’ on a per keyword level:

So, here we’re looking at the search terms that generated most visits to ‘www.webexpectations.com‘.

WOW!

HiPPO friendliness?  We think so.  There is a lot of great new functionality in Google Analytics Version 5.  This little snap shot should help you to help your HiPPOs – hopefully it will help you too.