The Google Analytics Blog posted an announcement that the Google Analytics Interface will be updated on July 18, which is the final phase of their V2 update that began in May. They’ll be rolling out some other new bits, and for those of you that haven’t been working with it, here’s an overview.

• Fast Implementation – just cut and paste javascript into your page.  This really isn’t a new feature, but they’ve got to mention it as it’s a big differentiator from the log analyzer tools.
• Keyword and Campaign Comparison – Provides the ability to break your traffic down in ways that will make sense to you and that will help you make business decisions.
• Custom Dashboards – You can distill the information you want, and make it available to the people who need it within your organization.
• AdWords Integration – Track not only you’re click throughs, you can track the customer the whole way through the order process.
• Trend and Date Slider – Provides an easy way to extract the information you want, compare dates, etc.
• Ecommerce Tracking – The ecommerce tracking helps to track your customers the entire way through your ordering process.  This is a good way to find those bottlenecks in the process where customers are dropping out.
• Funnel Visualization – This is the way they are actually tracking the ecommerce and AdWords integration.  You can define pathways through the site and the drop out points that are resulting in lost carts.  This one also works well for tracking customer sign up, etc. for subscription sites.
•  Site Overlay – This visually allows you to see how people have been navigating through your site, thus identifying wasted page space and links that aren’t working for you.
• Email reports – Customized email reports.  Currently all Vario customers with active sites should be receiving basic reports.  We can of course customize what you get if you need to track specific information.
• GeoTargeting – Allows you to drill down into a map showing where your traffic is coming from.  I’ll admit this is the feature most users tend to use the most.  I’d argue that the more important feature in the system is keyword tracking.

My take remains the same.  Google Analytics is now very close to competing toe to toe with the Enterprise Analytics Tools like Omniture, WebSideStory, etc.  For the small business, the choice is now a no brainer – you go with Google Analytics.  Currently I am installing Google Analytics by default on all Vario Creative designed sites.

You can see a quick video about Google Analytics by clicking here.  If you’re not familiar with the system, it’s worth the 5 minutes it will take to review.

Dig Deeper:
Google Analytics Blog Post
Google Analytics Is Re-Launched: Do These Five Things First In V2 – Occam’s Razor by Avinash Kaushik
What I’ve been working on: The New Google Analytics – Jeffrey Veen