Sometimes you have those days in life as an analyst that make you incredibly happy. This could be because of a fantastic insight or a winning A/B test. Last week I jumped in the air because of a new feature in Google Analytics. At first sight a “small” update but one that has a lot of impact on the work of analysts.

Indeed, Google has finally added within Google Analytics the “Commonly used Metrics and Dimensions” option. The feature is currently being rolled out and is already visible in my Google Analytics profiles. Is the new feature not yet visible for you? It seems that if you change the language to English, new features become visible faster in Google Analytics.

Commonly Used Metrics and Dimensions

At the top of each metric / dimension list after the new update, a list of metrics / dimensions that are used the most will be displayed. If you go searching for a dimension, for example “Page” it will now show up at the top more quickly. Especially after searching on the same dimension several times.

Personally, this makes me very happy. How many times (thousands of times for sure!!??) I have searched for “Page” and then had to scroll looking for “Page” in the long list. This was then between somewhere between “Next Page Path” and “Page Depth”. Every time this takes a few seconds anyway and besides that it causes frustration.

A small update but one that ensures you reduce your analysis time, leaving more time to translate data into insights.

Focus on UX and usability

Google has been mostly concerned with product development in recent years, but has made little improvement in the UX and usability of Google Analytics, for example. I hope there will be more focus on this in the coming period.

Perhaps in the comments we can start compiling a list of “UX fixes for Google Analytics.” Which UX change should be implemented first in Google Analytics to make it more user-friendly?

Happy analyzing!

This article was published on Aug. 28 at Webanalists.com