Google Analytics Update Allows You To Track All User Data In One View

A significant change has been made to Google Analytics, allowing developers to create a single reporting view to include both web and app data.  This update will improve the ability to analyze data for a growing number of businesses that have multiple digital touch points for their users, including web, mobile apps and other devices.  While many car dealerships don’t yet have websites that are mobile friendly, the latest Google Analytics update could help them to better understand the best ways to track app traffic.

Up until this latest development, Analytics users had to make the choice between an “app view” or a “web view”, with each option providing a different experience.  The new ability for businesses to analyze these statistics in a single view will provide them with an easier and more effective tool to gain insight about their users’ behavior.  Google Analytics now refers to “Sessions” across the service as opposed to “Visits”, with the latter only being truly useful on the web.  Google explains that this new update will give businesses “a clear and consistent way to analyze and refer to all of your Google Analytics data.”

If a Google Analytics user prefers to continue to keep their web and app metrics separate, they will need to filter them in their reporting views.  Additionally, Google’s analytics library for web apps now includes the option to track the user’s screen name, app name, app version and exception tracking.  The new features will be available to all Analytics accounts over the next few weeks.

Google released a description of this update on April 16, explaining that, “to help you understand what users do in the increasingly diverse digital landscape, we’re enabling you to view web and app data from the same reporting view.”

It is expected that this update will increase the focus by car dealerships to make their websites mobile friendly, with an understanding of the power of the Google Analytics tool for tracking their mobile users and increasing the reach of their business.

Google’s announcement explains the update further, stating that, “Until today, some metrics and dimensions used different names in app views and in web views, even though they presented the exact same data.  Now, all metric, dimensions, and segment names are the same, regardless if they’re used for web or app data.  This gives you a clear and consistent way to analyze and refer to all of your Google Analytics data.”

With more and more industries spending an increasingly large amount of time on making their websites mobile friendly, experts expect that many car dealerships will move in this direction as well.  With the new update to Google Analytics to see all user data in one view, the time has come to fully utilize th