Google Analytics vs. Usability

I’ve had some more time to test the new Google Analytics service since the last time my colleague Jesper first wrote about it. There is still some usability issues that of cause very well could be because the service of today still is only a week old. As mentioned previously we had a problem seeing that Analytics actually was receiving and processing hits on our site. When I added yet another site a couple of days later on the 16th, the lack of response from the service was still an issue.

Even though I can now see the data that is being captured and the reports Google Analytics is generating, the front page of my Analytics account still says (even now after 5 days) that it is “Waiting for Data”:
Google Analytics - Waiting for Data

For a while it was the same with the Analytics account for this blog. But now after 7 days it’s finally saying “Receiving Data”:
Google Analytics - Receiving Data

When viewing the fist page of the reports area 4 nice Executive graphs are shown:

  • Visits and Pageviews – A linier graph showing unique visitors and page views over a 7 day period
  • Visits by New and Returning – The percentage of new vs. returning visitors
  • Geo Map Overlay – Not a graph but a world map showing where your visitors come from
  • Visits by Source – The domain from where your visitors are referred

The Visits by Source show a list of the top 6 referring domains. Here I found a minor usability issue if the referring domains are too long. See the example below from the domain www.skolehjemsamtaler.dk where the domain “standard.skolekom” is shown in 3rd position. As we all know there is no such thing as a .skolekom TLD and when looking in the HTML source I can of cause see the it should say “standard.skolekom.emu.dk”. The box where it is showing the domain is just not wide enough to show the whole name.

Google Analytics - Visits by Source example

Google Analytics have temporarily closed for new sign-ups due to higher then expected interest in the new service. This also explains the slow data updates we currently are experiencing.

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5 Responses to “Google Analytics vs. Usability”

  1. Piotr Says:

    Personaly, I think you need to look at availability before you look at usability.

    I think the biggest issue for corporate usage is:

    “Personal information and other data we collect
    Google collects personal information when you register for a Google service or otherwise voluntarily provide such information. We may combine personal information collected from you with information from other Google services or third parties to provide a better user experience, including customizing content for you. ”

    Found on: http://www.google.com/intl/en/privacy.html

    This brings up several issues.
    Now, what company would accept information regarding their users, first be sent “our of the house”, and thereby out of their control. This for example clearly requires change in the companies Privacy Policy regarding the website. And for large scale high end companies, this might not be the best thing. Funny enough, these are normally the kind of company that actually ask other questions than the basic “how many users have we had on the website this month” and therefore require high end data mining tools like Webtrends, Clientstep or to some degree Urchin.

    Second of all, any or all information regarding a websites users and their behavior on the tracked website, will be shared with who ever Google sees fit.
    Third – and I know this for a fact by experience – Google/urchin had declined to grant access, or in other way share the data collected on a urchin account with the customer in their raw form. This means that if you have been using Urchin for 2 years, and you are moving towards another Data mining tool, you are not able to “take your data with you”…. In short, if you in, your in “for life”, unless you accept to either loose the data or have 2 systems..

    Another interesting issue, software like Alexa, RedSherif and other spyware minded to track users across individual independent websites by 3rd parties has for the last many years been -if not banned then boycotted by companies – and first of all users. Politikken used it some years ago, but stopped, once awareness level among users rose.
    Urchin, implemented on a large scale, will enable Google to do exactly that. Google will be able to see You checking out http://www.xyz.com, after which you jump to http://www.abc.com and so on.. and if all the websites run Urchin, Google will be able to track you as a user across the board.
    This information is immensely valuable, and enables whoever has it to profile in great detail who you are.
    Besides the fact of knowing exactly what you do and being able to share that information with whoever they see fit.

    I could go on, but this it the top of the iceberg. I would never professional recoment anyone to use Urchin, unless their privacy policy becomes as strict as any other hosted solution. This would in term prevent the ROI for Google so Im not sure its going to happen.

  2. Thomas Watson Steen Says:

    Nice comment. You touch upon some very interesting points here. I guess we all have to remember that there is “no such thing as a free lunch”.

    Just on the side node: I’m not sure if you saw the previous post by Jesper, but he talks about their privacy policy – or actually the lack of it to be exact ;)

  3. Piotr Says:

    Hey,

    Thanx :) Im doing an internal briefing on thursday regarding Urchin all-in-all. What i wrote here are some of the thoughts behind it… there is actualy a lot more to be said, specialy when you start looking on the entire ROI scenario and the priority by which products are chosen by Medium og top lvl management..

    Im definetly going to mention the Privacy policy issue there… We spoke about it yesterday, and i remember that it was the same when i signed up. Beeing paranoid, you would think they did it on purpose, and therby, but im not realy sure of how it would be handled by law. As you mentioned – you actualy say yes to nothing, but on the other hand, the privacy policy is pretty clear once you look it up. Its full of holes, but still obvious…

    Computerworld has an exciting article on it too in Danish: http://www.computerworld.dk/debat/223 ( remember to read the article too on http://www.computerworld.dk/art/31309)

    – Piotr

  4. Jesper Rønn-Jensen Says:

    Just in: Article about how Google will change web marketing via the analytics tool (in Danish): Hvordan Google vil ændre fremtidens markedsføring
    Af Kresten Bergsøe

  5. gaurav Says:

    google anaylytics has announced new feature of Data Sharing.. is is safe to share your website data with google analytics.. please give us your valuable feedback..