March 4th, 2012
Google Analytics Enhances User Interface
Google Analytics just gave its user interface a minor facelift and some enhancements to improve usability. Google received a number of feedbacks on how to make the Google Analytics UI more comprehensive and easy-to-use for new users. Google has put a premium on details such as more icons and an improved Metric Group selection. In its blog post, Google said:
“The primary goal of this update is to bring more attention to the things that matter — your data, and how you analyze it. We improved legibility of score card and table data, and refined our color palette to draw attention toward data instead of navigation elements.”
The icons received a more detailed look and is now situated prominently on the sidebar. Aside from that, new thumbnails are added like Home, Custom Reporting, and Standard Reporting. Check out a detailed image of the graph area from MarketingLand.com:
1.) Increased visibility of “compare to metrics” option.
2.) Goals tab is more prominent and easy to use, this is a heavily used navigation option.
3.)The data grouping options (Day, Week, Month…) were brought outside the drop down, making it easier to use.
4.) Better looking graphs: the points got smaller and more linked to the lines. The graphs does not use Flash anymore, i.e. they can be seen also on iPads/iPhones.
5.) The strip with the totals are now below the graph, which is more intuitive.
6.) The types of data visualization above tables are much easier to use outside a drop down.
February 7th, 2012
Super Bowl XLVI Proves Increasing Use of Mobile Internet
It was a great Super Bowl game again this year, and the digital world was once again involved in a big way. Super Bowl XLVI had the most number of tweets for a sporting event, Twitter feedback reached 12,233 tweets per second when the Giants were triumphant over the Pats. And as fans cheered for their teams, search engine activity was climbing as well. Google reports on their blog that people were both watching the game while busy talking about it online through their mobile devices. It only shows that people are really accessing the Web via mobile.
Among the top trending searches on Google were: Giants, Patriots, Madonna, Tom Brady, and Halftime show. Google’s Jeffrey Oldham says that 41% of searches related to Super Bowl Ads came from mobile devices. Famous Super Bowl ads were being viewed over at YouTube more than 30 million times before the event. M&M’s, GoDaddy, and Acura were the top popular commercial in terms of Google search queries. check out the infographic below by Google for more Super Bowl XLVI online activity.
