Using Google Analytics Premium Features

Google Analytics helps millions of website owners to make sense of data that relates to the movement of traffic to, from, and round their website(s). This information can then be used to review and improve the performance of their websites.

Google Analytics “Standard”

What most website owners are looking for of course, (if their website sells or promotes a product or service), is anything that will present them with the opportunity of increasing their site’s conversion rate.

Websites that fulfil a different function, (providing information only – like HM Revenue and Customs for example), would use the data for something different; something like monitoring visitor behaviour to see which web-pages they frequent the most, and how they navigate their way there. But whatever the purpose of the website, Google Analytics provides owners with the measurements that enable them to modify their websites to maximise their performance

Enter – Google Analytics Premium

For the majority of online businesses, Google Analytics provides them with more than enough data. But for other, much larger, businesses (those websites that receive more than 10 million hits per annum), the standard release of Google Analytics doesn’t quite cut the mustard. So Google have developed Google Analytics Premium, a new toy for the “big boys” to play with. However, having used the words “new toy”, that’s not strictly true, because the Premium release of Google Analytics was in actual fact launched back in September 2011, over 2 years ago.

For Those with Larger Pockets

These so called “big boys” are those that we refer to as being large enterprise businesses, and they include the likes of Wall-Mart, Exxon Mobil, Samsung, and Apple. These companies, and many more like them, have multi-million £ turnovers, and to them, paying the price of $150,000 per annum (which is what it costs to obtain Google Analytics Premium), is not much more than pocket money, although admittedly they have pretty large pockets.

The truth of the matter is that for companies operating on this sort of scale, with the huge volumes of traffic that their websites get, small changes to the website’s infrastructure can result in significant changes when multiplied up by so many visitors. So what sort of new features does Google Analytics Premium bring into the mix?

The Exciting New Feature of Google Analysis Premium

Before Premium was rolled out to the online business community, it was beta tested by a number of Google’s largest customers.

The features under trial were:

• Additional processing power
• Enhanced analysis, reporting
• Improved levels of service and technical support
• Performance guarantees

Additional Processing Power

The real key to Google Analytics Premium lies in its ability to process greater volumes of data. The standard Analytics program provides support for up to 20 different custom dimensions, and 20 different custom metrics, whereas the premium version caters for up to 200 custom dimensions, and 200 custom metrics.

It’s worth mentioning at this juncture that users do not have the ability to delete any dimensions. They can however be disabled, which is what you will need to do if you have reached the 200 limit but then need to enter more. There is however a word of warning. Once disabled, a dimension cannot be reinstated. Instead, you would have to create a new version.

Enhanced Analysis and Reporting

Having drastically expanded the processing power, Google have provided enhanced analysis and reporting facilities to interpret the data in a more micro-managed way.

Improved Real-time Reporting

In the standard release of Analytics, measurements were taken every 30 minutes. With Google Analytics Premium, measurements are taken every 5 minutes. Bearing in mind the huge amount of traffic we’re talking about, this improved measurement interval means that any changes in trends can in effect be spotted, reported, and acted upon in real time.

Categorising Visitors

Every website has a different cross-section of new visitors and returning visitors. Premium allows users to differentiate in terms of client category, but more importantly, to also use this information in conjunction with other statistics, and dimensions. So, this means that the behaviour of the new, first time visitors to the website can be compared to existing, returning visitors, to see how their use and navigation of the site differs.

Visitor Behaviour

This function enables users to monitor the behaviour of visitors to the website. For example, you can determine exactly how many visitors only come to the website once, or how many make several visits without ever making an enquiry or completing a purchase.

Landing Patterns

Another aspect of the enhanced reporting facilities is the ability to measure how many times a particular visitor lands on the website in a specific period of time. But bearing in mind the vagaries of mobile phone signal strength across the nation, these statistics have to be viewed with care, as some mobile device users simply find that their signal strength inexplicably gives out from time to time forcing them to call again.

Visitor Engagement

Visitor engagement is one of the most talked about aspects of visitor behaviour when it comes down to analysing website performance. The consequences of publishing new content on a website can have a significant effect on engagement. If visitors merely skip from page to page, or article to article, they are showing minimal engagement and are less likely to become a client. The fact of the matter is that the more a visitor engages with your site, the more likely he or she is to eventually either make an enquiry, or complete a purchase.

Improved Levels of Service and Technical Support

Google Analytics Premium is a complex and powerful tool and in order to help users to get the most out of it, Google have created an excellent 24/7 support network to help with both the installation and utilisation of the new package.

Service Level Guarantees

Google offer a full performance guarantee with regard to a service level agreements, data collection, processing and reporting.