Google Analytics interface upgrade: January 2013 edition

In March 2012, Google Analytics launched an update to its reporting interface that was split into three tabs: home, standard and custom reports. This update mainly allowed for isolated Adwords reporting as well as real-time reports. In practice, going the extra click to get to real-time reports annoyed users more than anything else. The January 15, 2013 update rolled out by Google now divides the interface into two tabs instead of 3: reports and customization. For some obscure reason, Google has always struggled with the French versions of the interface ;-)

Google Analytics v6 tabs EN

“Reporting” (duh) points to the standard reports and “Customization” leads (surprisingly) to custom reports.

Standards reports now include a 2-section left hand side menu: “My Stuff”, which includes shortcuts, alerts and dashboards, and “Standard reports” which include all the Google Analytics reports you know and love. One could argue that the “My Stuff” section should feel at home in the Customization tab but after due consideration, they are probably accessed more quickly within Standard Reports.

Google Analytics v6 my stuff EN Google Analytics v6 standard reports EN

Note that the Real-Time reports are now (logically) integrated into standard reporting. Adwords reports (which had gained their own private “Advertising” section in the March 2012 update) are now in the Traffic Sources menu, back where they belong 😉

Google analytics v6 traffic sources EN

Finally, you may already have access to the campaign attribution modeling tool (which had been reserved for Google Analytics Premium customers) in your Conversions reports:

Google Analytics v6 conversion menu EN

This modeling tool allows you to compare the impact of campaign conversions whether they occur during the first or last interaction, or using linear distribution, etc..

Google Analytics modeling assignment

As for me, I welcome the new, streamlined interface.

With that, I ‘m off to redo all my screenshots for my Google Analytics training support material ;-)

Author: Julien Coquet

Expert de la mesure d’audience sur Internet depuis plus de 15 ans, Julien Coquet est consultant senior digital analytics et responsable produit et évangélisation pour Hub’Scan, une solution d’assurance qualité du marquage analytics. > A propos de Julien Coquet

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.