Because of its power and usability, programmers have been hard at work coming up with options to enhance GA, some of which recognize that in its original form the package may be difficult to understand, hard to access and due to its “invisibility” may prevent the account holder from seeing valuable events or trends as they are happening. We all have serious constraints on our time, yet there are certain tasks that we should never overlook and should maintain on a regular basis – tracking and testing and referring to your GA account included.
One of the most highly recommended plug-ins is simply called Better Google Analytics and is in common with many such plug-ins, best accessed through a Firefox extension. This plug-in makes the original much more user-friendly and easy to navigate, incorporating a search option and making the goals and funnels features more intuitive. You will need the Greasemonkey Firefox plug before you activate.
If you find yourself coming to the sudden realization that you have forgotten to check your GA performance over the last few days, you may be interested in a script that could prompt you when something unusual happens. To get e-mail alerts from GA, install this script. You can specify certain parameters, including a drop in visitors or a sudden page count increase, triggering an e-mail alert to your inbox. If you are managing a number of sites you can be very specific and only receive reports from certain ones. Sometimes it is important for you to be aware of an episode asap, allowing you to react accordingly.
Site Scan is a very simple and generally free service, enabling you to receive a complete audit of your GA installation. Simply enter your URL and e-mail address and you will receive, in short order, a diagnostic. If certain pages are not being tracked, you can act.
Everyone loves the iPhone these days and now you can get an app for GA as well. This will enable you to view your statistics from multiple accounts and if it encourages you to keep in touch with your performance more often, we’re all for it.
Over at Google Conversion University, our Californian friends are intent on giving us the lowdown about GA. You can log in here and take a number of IQ tests with the aim of making you a more knowledgeable user. You are able to refer and experiment within your own account as you go and if you still scratch your head whenever “analytics” is mentioned, this is a great place for you to go, enabling you to take your exploration to the next level.
How do you keep track of your GA performance?
Adam Toren