Google decided to change its Analytics software in several annoying ways. Now when I login instead of being presented with all of the sites I regular check for CEI, I have a menu of choices that includes CEI, my personal sites, and techliberation.com (another blog for which I write). Add a click to my journey to the information I want.
Once I’ve entered one of these accounts I see a menue of the sites there, but only five at a time. There is a handy preview of many of the key stats, but that doesn’t offset how annoying it is to look at the menu of sites I manage for work (11 of them in total). Confusingly, you have to select to see 35 lines at a time to see all 11 sites, because each site occupies two lines. Previewing 10 lines doesn’t work, neither does 20, so I have to pick the next choice, which is 35.
Now I’m three or four clicks in and I’m just getting to the stats. This would all be fine if I could simply bookmark this portion of my Analytics account and then jump to it right away, but the URL doesn’t contain information like how many sites you’d like to see at once, etc. So, I’m left only with the option of doing lots of clicks and being needlessly annoyed.
Here, in the stats, is where you find the postive changes. Finally they’ve added custom reports beyond the glorified bookmarking of the older method of “saving” reports. These custom reports will be a big time saver to me and I’m sure to other managers of online properties who regularly report on performance.
So, thanks for the custom reports Google, this is a big improvement, but changing the menu navigation without giving users any options for customizing their view just doesn’t make sense. The time I will now spend loading and clicking through pages would be better spent doing something else, like analyzing my traffic.
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