Google Analytics
Google announced yesterday that its web statistics service–formerly called Urchin for Google–will now be offered for free to the general public. The improved service, renamed Google Analytics, is purported to provide accurate, timely, and most importantly useful information to “everyone from senior executives and advertising and marketing professionals to site owners and content developers.”
Though not necessary to take advantage of the statistics, an active AdWords account provides hooks for all sorts of valuable information about a web site's traffic. These extended metrics are ostensibly targeted at Google's paying customers, but clearly have added appeal to those prospective AdWords users with dollars to spend and a vested interest in spending them wisely in a competitive web marketplace.
A blurb from the press release:
“We want to give all online marketers and publishers access to powerful web analytics to help them better understand what their customers want. With this knowledge, businesses can create more accurate advertising and build better websites,” said Paul Muret, Google engineering director, and one of the founders of Urchin. “By making this powerful service free, we aim to give all websites–large and small–the tools they need to better serve their customers, make more money, and improve the web experience for everyone.”
Combining the best bits of its Urchin acquisition with its competition-flogging mastery of the web interface, I think it's fair to say that Google has once again successfully applied its winning business strategy: catering to the web as it is, and not necessarily how they'd like it to be.
Editor's addendum: For those of you folks out there who are intruiged by the principals and methodology of advertising in the aformentioned web marketplace, you might want to check out the Google Analytics companion website, Conversion University, which has quite an interesting array of information for your marketing edification.
10 Missives So Far
01 mokiejovis said on Tue Nov 15 10:17:50 EST
Off topic:
I really like your layout, but the overlay that blends so well at the top ends up a little broken when the scrolling is done.
Have you ever seen Eric Meyer's CSS/Edge site? It's an awesome example of what you can do with CSS alone on a compliant browser.
You might try implementing his Complexspiral Distorted demo and see if you can't get the same effect.
02 josh said on Tue Nov 15 13:12:39 EST
Point taken, though I do think "broken" is a tad harsh for
the whitespace effect, which is actually what I was going for all along.
CSS? What's that? ;)
03 mokiejovis said on Tue Nov 15 21:04:14 EST
Sorry, you misunderstand. "Broken" insofar as the image "snaps" or "breaks" in the middle when you scroll down, i.e., the image is a little broken.
04 josh said on Tue Nov 15 22:26:39 EST
I get it now. Perhaps you know something I don't, and I am indeed treading upon some design maxim or aesthetic principal by allowing the image to 'break' thusly--but I rather like it as it is, and have no real desire to change it.
Thanks for the input.
05 James said on Wed Nov 16 20:17:40 EST
Josh, have you seen your site in FireFox? I had never seen your site in IE until now(after reading the comments) and in IE the whole bg scrolls with the content. In FireFox (or at least mine) only the bg in the content box scrolls. The bg outside stays where it is(like the middle image is breaking from the rest). I think that is what he is talking about...
06 vanessa said on Wed Nov 16 22:24:32 EST
White space is beautiful :)
It reminds me of a story: back when I was a wee youngin' I took a real "adult" art class - my first one, with middle-aged adults. Boy did I think I was the cat's ass. I had a wonderfully patient teacher and she taught me something that carries me to this day. It was a catchy little phrase - something that my 8-year old brain could really comprehend.
"When in doubt, leave it out."
There comes a time in every design where you just don't really know if you're finished - so you're tempted to just add a little something here and maybe a little something there. Then I remember that phrase. If it's not VITAL to the function of the piece, just stop... and walk away. Sometimes it's hard to do - but usually a week or so later when I look back on it with "fresh eyes" it's perfect (or as perfect as I can make it).
Blah. Didn't mean to drone on. Carry on. :)
07 josh said on Thu Nov 17 12:48:58 EST
The bg outside stays where it is(like the middle image is breaking from the rest). I think that is what he is talking about...
Yes, I have seen my site in Firefox. In fact, I see my site in firefox every day, and-as per good design practice-I used Firefox as the base browser when I designed this site. The fact that the BG graphic scrolls in IE is actually a case of the design "breaking", because IE has issues with CSS shorthand, and I don't give enough of a shit about IE visitors to add a hack, which in this case would "break" the image on that browser, too.
The thing that I was hoping to get around explaining is that I did indeed try the stacked static background images, and I did not like the results. For one thing, the split between the sidebar and the content area is a mess under these circumstances,as well as the location of the masthead. If you stop and think about it, and hell, look at the markup even, you'll see that it is a) not feasible and b) not worth the structural instability required to make it feasible.
Gah, you people are gonna give me a complex.
08 vanessa said on Sat Nov 19 2:49:11 EST
perhaps you misinterpreted my post... I was defending your use of white space - I think it's lovely. Sorry if it was unclear;)
09 josh said on Sat Nov 19 11:00:19 EST
Nah, I got what you were trying to say, V. I was just in a bit of a mood, and a bit of a hurry.
Thanks for the support, though. :)
10 James said on Sun Nov 20 18:41:54 EST
Personally I think the scrolling works. It doesn't look broken or out of place at all... I've never really noticed it as your designs all seem to flow perfect... I was just pointing out what i thought the guy meant. I had never seen your design in IE before, so i didn't know it was 'static' in IE.
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