Unlike in previous secretive summits, Google has offered a glimpse into upcoming features in Google Analytics during the recent annual summit at Mountain View. Google has decided to enlighten the community about recently added and future changes that will help users extract a lot more from Google Analytics.
The company has just launched Universal Analytics that allows users to customize Analytics by integrating specific datasets and monitor the complete marketing funnel. Google has also made public its Attribution Modeling Tool that was introduced for their premium clients in April 2012. This vital tool delivers detailed reports into the results of different marketing strategies in a bid to boost conversions.
Another feature of Universal Analytics is Custom Dimensions and Custom Metrics. This feature allows you to include additional information into your Google Analytics account such as CRM data. Instead of default settings at present, you will be able to customize dimensions and metrics to get detailed reports such as measuring your marketing campaign in further detail for accurate ROI.
An additional exciting feature being developed for 2013 is the Customer Lifetime Value or CLV. This feature will display the amount of money in dollars paid by any consumer on a specific business. Detailed reports of CLV will include displaying the amount you have to shell out to get a new client in a specified segment. In addition, you will also be shown the amount required to retain specific clients. You can also rank clients, value specific segments or all clients, and view the precise results of your marketing campaigns.
From next month, you will be able to import cost data from several sources including affiliates, paid search providers, email, social traffic, organic traffic, and other digital forms through their Cost Data Import feature. You can also compare Google with non-Google software in terms of performance by using this feature.
In 2013, Google will also allow you to extract reports based on Recency, Frequency, and Monetary Value or RFM. These reports will help identify your most valuable clients so that you can focus on further pleasing them, retaining them, and using the identified strategies to add new clients.
Google had already introduced their Google Analytics Premium in the USA, Canada, and the UK. Buoyed by the success of this premium tool, the company plans to offer it in countries such as France, Brazil, Italy, Netherlands, Japan, Norway, Germany, and Spain in 2013.
As mentioned in our earlier blog, Google has also decided to shift their Google Analytics Mobile App Analytics from closed beta to open beta. Google has taken great pains to collect vital feedback from over 5,000 mobile app developers to test and improve this tool. All marketers and developers will now be able to use this tool to track the success of their mobile apps in far greater detail and with greater accuracy, which in turn will help them refine future campaigns.
2013 promises to be an exciting year for Google as well as Google Analytics users. You should follow this blog regularly to learn about new features being added to Analytics.