Free For Life: Dear Google: We need better Google Analytics features for agencies

Posted by WebAdvantage.net on May 13, 2011

Dear Google

We love the capabilities and our customers the power of Google Analytics and wholeheartedly recommend to everyone. It is pretty much everything we want and does it very well. However, we have how you come to make Google Analytics, more specifically for agencies in the course of time with a few ideas.

We would like to submit the following as a humble suggestions:

Google Analytics conversion funnel should be set up be facilitated. When you set up a conversion we must what give goal first set we - URL target, want time on website or pages/visit. This is pretty self-explanatory, with a conversion funnel, we choose URL target. The next step can be but slightly annoying and unintuitive. You need to "Head match", "Exact match" or "regular expression match" choose. While a handy definition is provided, it is still a more important step and taking into account. This can be a difficult decision to make, especially since it is crucial to the performance of the Setup. In this case the default selection is the best choice for certain situations "Head Match", but it does not necessarily.

We have found by experience, it may often require regular expressions ("regex") thus conversion funnel to work, especially if the target page URL contains hyphens or as a folder is displayed and contains his subpages (d. h./contact / over - us, etc..). Unfortunately, the use of the regex in the first steps of the funnel is not suggested or specified on the Setup side, but perhaps it should be. For example, requires the first step to enter our form request - proposal, visitors follow a string using regular expressions when creating:

We suggest this simplify in an improved Setup Wizard. One should copy and paste the entire URL can specify a field in the text box tick, if to be matched for the page, the URL exactly, then click submit. Google Analytics should then work behind the scenes to remove all unnecessary parts and, if necessary, add regular expressions, to ensure that the page if the page exists and correct, functional Google Analytics tracking code contains also the verification which track is right.

If we use Google Analytics, track multiple marketing effort want to and we can fast conversion rates (not necessarily with AdWords) to our assigned 20 conversion slots. While we could create multiple profiles to expand this number no workaround should use required! Plus this increased the complexity in the gathering of simple reporting. We suggest an alternative - a simple conversion tracker.

It might not always be necessary, for see what pages she spent a visitor from where they went, entered time on the page, etc.. Sometimes, we want to know just how many visits receive a landing page and how many conversions that we have. We currently use 3rd-party tools to do this, but why not add them as a native function to Google Analytics? Because we need not have the additional capabilities, this could be the system requirements reduced, so that we can set up any number of any landing/conversion page tracker?

Sometimes will a client log-in at 2:00 pm and see how your site is. An analytics-savvy visitors can log in, view and interpret the data. But some clients may not want the report options root or just analyze the numbers you want to only see the results. This can largely be addressed by viewing a profile with only certain pre-configured reports available. But can this be improved?

We suggest spectators expected the creation of profile templates catering for certain. For example, it could be a "management" template built around an overview of current data and performance charts. As of a "beginner" template, that only the basics? Of course, we should a "search of marketers" template topics around conversion reports.

If reports for clients, we want to be able more options customize it. Perhaps we could add our logo and/or the client logo. How about match colors? Of course we suggest purple sometimes it can be helpful to make see a chart, a different size; Provide specific diagrams re sizable. How about's offers a "white label" reporting option for agencies, so we can make it appear as our own?