Google Analytics: Flow Visualization
Google introduces Flow Visualization for Google Analytics: visitors flow and goal flow; http://eicker.at/GAFlowVisualization
Google introduces Flow Visualization for Google Analytics: visitors flow and goal flow; http://eicker.at/GAFlowVisualization
Replacing a pile of textbooks: Inkling, interactive textbooks for the iPad; http://j.mp/9dh6mX
Naughton: 9 key steps to understanding the most powerful tool of our age, the Internet; http://j.mp/b7puKP
Naughton: “The strange thing about living through a revolution is that it’s very difficult to see what’s going on. … We’re living through a radical transformation of our communications environment. … Often, these interpretations are compressed into vivid slogans, memes or aphorisms: information ‘wants to be free’; the ‘long tail’ is the future of retailing; ‘Facebook just seized control of the internet’, and so on. … Here’s a radical idea: why not see if there’s anything to be learned from history? … So let’s conduct what the Germans call a Gedankenexperiment – a thought experiment. Imagine that the net represents a similar kind of transformation in our communications environment to that wrought by printing. What would we learn from such an experiment? … The most common – and still surprisingly widespread – misconception is that the internet and the web are the same thing. They’re not. … Disruption is a feature, not a bug. … The internet’s disruptiveness is a consequence of its technical DNA. … Think ecology, not economics. … Complexity is the new reality. … [Common] strategies are unlikely to work in our emerging environment, where intelligence, agility, responsiveness and a willingness to experiment (and fail) provide better strategies for dealing with what the networked environment will throw at you. … The network is now the computer. … The Web is changing. … Huxley and Orwell are the bookends of our future. … Our intellectual property regime is no longer fit for purpose. … The sad fact is that if there is a ‘truth’ about the internet, it’s rather prosaic: to almost every big question about the network’s long-term implications the only rational answer is the one famously given by Mao Zedong’s foreign minister, Zhou Enlai, when asked about the significance of the French Revolution: ‘It’s too early to say.’ It is.“
Gerrit Eicker 09:06 on 20. October 2011 Permalink |
Google: “[A]t Web 2.0 Summit [we] unveiled the release of ‘Flow Visualization’ in Google Analytics, a tool that allows you to analyze site insights graphically, and instantly understand how visitors flow across pages on your site. Starting this week, ‘Visitors Flow’ and ‘Goal Flow’ will be rolling out to all accounts. Other types of visualizers will be coming to Google Analytics in the coming few months, but in the meantime, here’s what you can expect from this initial release. … The Visitors Flow view provides a graphical representation of visitors’ flow through the site by traffic source (or any other dimensions) so you can see their journey, as well as where they dropped off. … Goal Flow provides a graphical representation for how visitors flow through your goal steps and where they dropped off. Because the goal steps are defined by the site owner, they should reflect the important steps and page groups of interest to the site. In this first iteration, we’re supporting only URL goals, but we’ll soon be adding events and possibly other goal types. … These two views are our first step in tackling flow visualization for visitors through a site, and we look forward to hearing your feedback as all users begin experiencing it in the coming weeks. We’re excited to bring useful and beautiful tools like these to help you understand your site, so stayed tuned for more!”
SEL: “Path analysis has historically been a feature that provided little insights on user behavior, mainly because visitors behave in such non linear ways that it is hard to learn something from their paths, even when looking at aggregated data. The best option to path analysis has been to analyze micro conversions, i.e. looking at each page and trying to learn if the page has fulfilled its objective. However, the visualizations below bring some interesting approaches that will be very helpful for web analysts. … As some might recognize, the visualization used on this feature is very similar to the one created by Charles J. Mainard shown below. This image, created in a 1869 to describe Napoleon’s disastrous Russian campaign of 1812, displays several variables in a single two-dimensional image…”
LM: “I need Red Bull. Seriously, I can’t keep up with all the new features and announcement coming from Google Analytics lately. In the last few months, they’ve released a new interface, real-time data, multi-channel funnels, Google Analytics Premium, Google Webmaster Tools integration, plot rows, site speed report, new mobile reports, social media tracking, and now Flow Visualization. You can read their official announcement, but ours is much more informative [and we have video!]. … Navigation Flow: provides a graphical representation of your start/end nodes, and the paths to or from your site that your visitors follow. When you create a navigation flow, you have the option to identify a single page by URL, or to create a node that represents a group of pages whose URLs match a condition, for example, all pages whose URL contains a particular product identifier like shirts or jackets. … Sometimes, things are best explained with video. This is one of those times, so sit back, relax, and enjoy this brief tour through this new feature.“