InPage Beta!
Here is news that will make website owners happy, but is sure to devastate developers who built an empire on a shortcoming of Google Analytics.
Google Analytics is a tool that provides website tracking information, in a vast array of reports, to website owners and developers. It tells site owners how many visits, from what platform, whether they had Flash installed and what version, what their click path was, how long they stayed on the site (and each page), when they dropped off, and so on.
Google Analytics also had a tool called "overlay," which allowed the site owner to see where on a page users clicked - in so-called "heat map" form. It was a so-so tool, and many people found it difficult to use, and therefore... didn't!
Third party developers were quick to fill the void, and created additional tools - for a fee - that would provide sophisticated site overlays, giving site owners real, solid information about how users responded to pages. It was really the next best thing to eye-tracking (this is the in-lab study of websites that literally tracks where users look on a page, identifying the pattern of where individual users looked, how long they stayed on a certain location, as well as providing aggregate results for many users).
Now Google has introduced a new analytics tool called InPage Analytics, users will get a truly useful page analysis that provides the detailed information about users click patterns on a page by page basis.
What's so good about this, you ask? Well, imagine that you put an offer on your site in the upper left corner, and nobody clicks on it. What's wrong? Is it the wording? Is it the location, the color, the size? With the data you can collect from a tool like InPage, you can test different locations and patterns and sizes and colors, and see what it is that makes people click. Next time you create an offer, or design a webpage, you have real user information available to start creating a webpage that people love to visit, and are likely to respond to.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again, I really think Google is one brilliant company. Keep it up, Google!
Google Analytics is a tool that provides website tracking information, in a vast array of reports, to website owners and developers. It tells site owners how many visits, from what platform, whether they had Flash installed and what version, what their click path was, how long they stayed on the site (and each page), when they dropped off, and so on.
Google Analytics also had a tool called "overlay," which allowed the site owner to see where on a page users clicked - in so-called "heat map" form. It was a so-so tool, and many people found it difficult to use, and therefore... didn't!
Third party developers were quick to fill the void, and created additional tools - for a fee - that would provide sophisticated site overlays, giving site owners real, solid information about how users responded to pages. It was really the next best thing to eye-tracking (this is the in-lab study of websites that literally tracks where users look on a page, identifying the pattern of where individual users looked, how long they stayed on a certain location, as well as providing aggregate results for many users).
Now Google has introduced a new analytics tool called InPage Analytics, users will get a truly useful page analysis that provides the detailed information about users click patterns on a page by page basis.
What's so good about this, you ask? Well, imagine that you put an offer on your site in the upper left corner, and nobody clicks on it. What's wrong? Is it the wording? Is it the location, the color, the size? With the data you can collect from a tool like InPage, you can test different locations and patterns and sizes and colors, and see what it is that makes people click. Next time you create an offer, or design a webpage, you have real user information available to start creating a webpage that people love to visit, and are likely to respond to.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again, I really think Google is one brilliant company. Keep it up, Google!
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