Milestones and Google Analytics
February 13th, 2009
Chris Palmieri
Recently, we started working on a new project with a quick launch cycle and several dev projects moving at once. We’re tracking the project with Google Analytics, and as you can imagine, there have been a lot of bumps large and small to follow in our stats.
One team member suggested that we keep a log of our releases so we understand how they correspond to changes in traffic patterns. That got me thinking, “it’d be nice to track releases in GCal and have them appear on Analytics timelines.”
This would be especially useful for large organizations where stakeholders not directly involved in the website are occasionally checking Analytics to understand which web projects are paying off, and how the site is affecting their business.
I mocked this up quickly, taking design guidance from Google Finance. If anyone at Mountain View is listening, this one’s on the house!
yongfook
February 13th, 2009
reminds me of this, which I posted a while back on the old blog
http://archive.yongfook.com/2007/07/24/google-analytics-needs-this-feature-peak-points/
Christophe Sautot
February 13th, 2009
Digg this here: http://digg.com/design/Milestones_in_Google_Analytics_Feature_Request
Marco Cilia
February 13th, 2009
This is not from Mountain View but…
http://www.analyticsexperts.com/google-analytics-notes-firefox-extension/
Chris Palmieri
February 13th, 2009
Marco,
That’s a cool idea! Would be nice on the timeline, but it’s a good start.
Yongfook, I like your idea too, especially since it’s data that Google already has. Probably more useful who are watching the site closely and can act quickly on the trends they see.
Raphaël Mazoyer
February 13th, 2009
And you could also log external circumstances such as offline campaigns or events, helping enrich your understanding of GA.
Max Hodges
March 2nd, 2009
cool, yeah, would be nice if they integrated into GA, but meanwhile you can just download the traffic data from GA as xml, csv etc so you plot your own graph and overlay the events. There are countless ways to make a graph from the XML data. here’s an example where someone is plotting the analytics data using Action Script and Yahoo Charts:
http://manewc.com/2008/04/29/median-chart-of-google-dashboard-analytics-xml-and-yahoo-astra-charts/
Chris Palmieri
March 2nd, 2009
That’s true, but probably not something I’d want to do more than once every few months.
I think the beauty of Google Analytics is in (relative) immediacy.
Christophe Sautot
December 8th, 2009
Hoping that someone at Google saw this. Feature now seems to be available with Analytics:
http://analytics.blogspot.com/2009/12/holiday-bonus-more-great-features.html