It is critical in every business that there be metrics in place to measure every possible aspect of the business so that we can gauge whether or not those aspects are getting better or worse. The more accurate and easier to obtain the metrics are, the better. Businesses need to be able to see, at a glance, information like how many units were sold for given period, what the profit margin was, what the business costs were, how many new customers, and so on. The business also needs to be able to measure the effectiveness of certain activities, including sales and marketing. For internet marketing, what we typically want to look at is how many people visit our website, where they came from, and what they did once they got there. For that, we need Google Analytics.
And now, one of the best and easiest to use iPhone apps for accessing your website’s Google Analytics just got better.
Dashboard for Google Analytics [iTunes link], made by Velyoo, released a major update today that added a ton of new features.
First, if you own one or more websites, than you absolutely MUST have Google Analytics connected and configured to each site. Google Analytics provides extensive, free statistics and measurements on your site’s performance. In addition to standard information like visits per day, you can see detailed reports of where those visitors are coming from, and where within your site they’re going. You can drill down to see specific sources of traffic, how that traffic flowed through your site, and the time those people spent on your website. You can see, for instance, if you’re getting a lot of traffic to your Contact page, but not an equivalent number of completed contacts, indicating there’s an issue with your Contact page that needs to be addressed.
Next, download the Dashboard app so that you can call up your stats on your iPhone or iPad instantly. Dashboard tells you how many visitors you’ve had and if you take the time to set up Goals within Google Analytics (a typical goal is to have a visitor get to your Contact page), you can see goal conversions.
One super advantage the app has over the full web version of Google Analytics is that the Dashboard app will give you close to real-time results. Google Analytics web only reports up to the previous day.
When I have written and am promoting a particularly important story or breaking news, Dashboard can tell me exactly how much traction that post is getting at any point in the day.
Now, with today’s update, the Dashboard app now provides:
New charts, pre-segmented by goal, for
– countries
– new vs. returning
– traffic sources
– top campaign traffic
– top referring sites
– top social sources
– top search keywords
– search traffic
– top content
This brings many of the advanced analysis aspects of Google Analytics to the iOS platform and is very exciting. I am looking forward to being able to see at a glance, in my iPhone, exactly where my traffic is coming from today. This level of sophistication in website traffic reporting will prove invaluable to website owners and marketers.
There are both free and paid (PRO) versions of the app, with the pro version providing a more detailed breakdown of goals and goal conversions for just $4.99.
Give the free version a spin and let us know what you think!