Squiz Analytics sneak peek - the Dashboard
27 AugWelcome to the first of our sneak peeks at Squiz Analytics; a new product currently in development to provide powerful analytics tools to the Squiz Suite. All images in this sneak peek are live product screenshots, so they may change before release and they will be missing some features.
A bit about Squiz Analytics
Squiz Analytics is based on Google Analytics and uses the Google Analytics API to retrieve your site's traffic and usage information. But Squiz Analytics is not just another view of Google Analytics. Our goal is to both improve the presentation of information that is important to you and fill some gaps in the functionality of Google Analytics.
It's important to note that Squiz Analytics does not require a Squiz CMS or Squiz Matrix system to use. All it requires is a Google Analytics account that is tracking usage on one or more sites. It can also connect to multiple accounts if you wish. Although Squiz Analytics has a powerful goal tracking feature, it does not require you to have any goals configured in Google Analytics. You can add goals through Squiz Analytics and, unlike Google Analytics, historical goal conversions will be calculated immediately. However, Squiz CMS will be required to utilise the A/B/C testing feature of Squiz Analytics, although we have plans to allow this feature to be used with any site in the future, including Squiz Matrix powered sites.
An Overview of the Dashboard
Squiz Analytics can track multiple sites. We call each site a project as it contains all the site's traffic data, as well as goal and testing data. Each project has its own Dashboard where users can get a quick overview of the most important analytics and goal conversion data for a site.
The Dashboard shows all the common vital signs that you would be used to seeing in Google Analytics, but also presents a number of graphs to allow you to quickly track those vital signs over time. The screenshot above shows a one month graph, but we also have three and six month graphs available via a (yet to be developed) calendar picker. We've also got a live screenshot of the site you are tracking just to keep you in context while you are looking at your reports.
The graphs on the Dashboard have two overlays; Sources and Goals. The screenshot above shows the sources overlay, so you can get a quick picture of how your visitors are getting to your site (direct traffic, referring sites or search engines) as well as how your site is performing over time. Hovering over a column in the graph gives you a bit more information about that day. This is particularly useful when you are viewing a six month graph as the columns are too thin to show data labels.
The Dashboard has a section devoted to traffic sources with a nice pie graph showing the split and how these traffic sources contributed to goal conversions. The outer ring on the pie graph shows this goal conversion percentage so you can quickly get a visual indication of the traffic sources providing you the best conversion rates, although this data is also presented in the table above the graph.
There is also a recommendation engine built into the product that will help point out patterns in your traffic and goal data, but we don't have that report available to show you yet. So for now, you'll just have to look at that light blue area under the vital signs and wonder what magic will be unveiled when you finally get to press that View Recommendations button.
A Focus on Goal Conversions
Looking at pretty graphs is always nice, but unless you have some goals defined for your site, you can't accurately measure improvements and you certainly can't determine success rates while you test new changes. Squiz Analytics makes it very easy to create goals, and we give you access to historical information so you are free to add and remove goals as quickly and easily as you think of them.
Goals can be based on a range of criteria and we plan to offer the full range of goal types that we can support (they are numerous), although we are focusing on the following for our initial release:
- A single destination
- Multiple destinations (e.g., visit page A and also visit page B)
- Pages per visit
- Time spent on the site
- Custom events (e.g., view thank-you screen of a form; click a specific button)
- Referring site (e.g., track your referrals from site A over time)
Squiz Analytics allows you to create as many of these goals as you'd like for a project. The Top Goals box picks out your best performers and displays them on your Dashboard, along with the conversion rates and a small bar under the goal showing the traffic sources that contributed to the conversions. We'll show you the dashboards for each goal in a future sneak peek so you can see the full range of reports available for goal tracking.
Our focus on goals extends to the graphs on the Dashboard as well. By switching from the Sources overlay to the Goals overlay, you can both track your conversions over time and get more information about the effect of both converted and abandoned goals on your site's vital signs.
The screenshot above shows the Pages per Visit graph and has overlayed the percentage of goal conversions per day, indicated by the green section of the graph. The tooltip provides more information for each day, including the conversion rates, the average pages per visit for both converted and abandoned visits and a summary of the data for the day. In this case, the summary lets us know that visitors who converted a goal visited 187% more pages than those visitors who did not convert a goal.
For the Techies
Squiz Analytics makes use of the new Squiz Framework; a toolkit that allows you to build products that both look like and interact with all other Squiz Suite products. All the GUI elements you see in these screenshots will be available in the Squiz Framework, along with our standard feature-set that includes the up-to-date service, remote backup and the URL screenshot/PDF system. We're working hard on the Squiz Suite at the moment, so we wont have the framework available until after we've released Squiz Analytics and Squiz Search and got through the initial rollout period. We'll keep you updated and let you know release dates once we've got something locked in.
Something else to point out is that our GUI elements do not use Flash or other browser plugins. Our bar graphs are pure HTML and CSS and our pie graphs are SVG. We make heavy use of CSS3 throughout the interface, especially to generate rounded corners and shadows without the need for images. This allows for rapid interface development (and re-development) but does mean we fall back to a slightly less sexy interface for browsers that don't support these newer features. For example, Internet Explorer users will be looking at boxes all day (see screenshot below), although we have tried to make these boxes as sexy as boxes possibly can be.
The next Sneak Peek
While our goal system is fully functional, we are still working on implementing our goal adding/editing interfaces and reports. Our next Squiz Analytics sneak peek will bring you more information about goals and the advanced reporting we have around them. Stay tuned, and remember to subscribe to our RSS feeds for all the latest information.
We hope you've enjoyed this first sneak peek of Squiz Analytics. Changes are still being made to the Dashboard, so we encourage you to post your first impressions and suggestions in the comments below.