Over the years we’ve worked hard to make complex data easy to access and easy to understand. We’ve released features like
Advanced Segmentation , which lets you segment your traffic on the fly,
Custom Reporting -- the ability to create and share your own reports--, and
Analytics Intelligence , an algorithmic intelligence engine that automatically spots important changes in traffic. All of this work was done with the belief that you needed this data in order to make sense of your website traffic.
We’re big believers that data trumps opinion, so we set out to prove our belief. We’ll be the first to admit that we were wrong. After extensive analysis by our quantitative teams, we’ve uncovered that hits (or H ow I nterneters T rack S uccess) is the only metric that actually matters in web analytics. Forget that business about absolute unique visitors, goal completion rate, or even bounce rate. If you want to achieve success, you need to focus on hits.
With this finding, we’ve gone back to the drawing board with the Google Analytics interface. Since this will be a major change, we want to share with you a preview of the new Google Analytics UI:
(click to view full-size)
To help you make this transition,
Avinash Kaushik is releasing a new book:
Web Analytics 3.0 - The Greatest Hits . The new book (more of a thick brochure, really) is chock full of nearly 1,000 words on how to use hits to track your success. It’s your chance to learn how to hit from a true analytics ninja. Plus it’s much shorter than most of his blog posts.
We’re looking forward to exploring the next stage of web analytics with you. Now if you’ll excuse us, we’ve got a hit counter to watch.
Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Google Analytics Team & Hits Master
