Google Analytics Demos & Tools

As a member of the Google Analytics Developer Relations team, I often hear from our community that they want to do more with GA but don't always know how. They know the basics but want to see full examples and demos that show how things should be built.

Well, we've been listening, and today I'm proud to announce the launch Google Analytics Demos & Tools, a new website geared toward helping Google Analytics developers tackle the challenges they face most often.

The site aims to make experienced developers more productive (we use it internally all the time) and to show new users what's possible and inspire them to leverage the platform to improve their business through advanced measurement and analysis.

Some highlights of the site include a full-featured Enhanced Ecommerce demo with code samples for both Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager, a new Account Explorer tool to help you quickly find the IDs you need for various Google Analytics services and 3rd party integrations, several examples of easy-to-build custom dashboards, and some old favorites like the Query Explorer.

Google Analytics Demos & Tools not only shows off Google Analytics technologies, it also uses them under the hood. All pages that require authorization use the Embed API to log users in, and usage statistics, including outbound link clicks, authorization status, client-side exceptions, and numerous other user interaction events are measured using analytics.js.

Every page that makes use of a Google Analytics technology lists that information in the footer, making it easy for developers to see how all the pieces fit together. In addition, the entire site is open sourced and available on Github, so you can dive in and see exactly how everything works.

Feedback is welcome and appreciated!

By: Philip Walton, Developer Programs Engineer

A picture is worth a thousand (coherent) words: building a natural description of images

Posted by Google Research Scientists Oriol Vinyals, Alexander Toshev, Samy Bengio, and Dumitru Erhan

“Two pizzas sitting on top of a stove top oven”
“A group of people shopping at an outdoor market”
“Best seats in the house”

People can summarize a complex scene in a few words without thinking twice. It’s much more difficult for computers. But we’ve just gotten a bit closer -- we’ve developed a machine-learning system that can automatically produce captions (like the three above) to accurately describe images the first time it sees them. This kind of system could eventually help visually impaired people understand pictures, provide alternate text for images in parts of the world where mobile connections are slow, and make it easier for everyone to search on Google for images.

Recent research has greatly improved object detection, classification, and labeling. But accurately describing a complex scene requires a deeper representation of what’s going on in the scene, capturing how the various objects relate to one another and translating it all into natural-sounding language.

Automatically captioned: “Two pizzas sitting on top of a stove top oven”

Many efforts to construct computer-generated natural descriptions of images propose combining current state-of-the-art techniques in both computer vision and natural language processing to form a complete image description approach. But what if we instead merged recent computer vision and language models into a single jointly trained system, taking an image and directly producing a human readable sequence of words to describe it?

This idea comes from recent advances in machine translation between languages, where a Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) transforms, say, a French sentence into a vector representation, and a second RNN uses that vector representation to generate a target sentence in German.

Now, what if we replaced that first RNN and its input words with a deep Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) trained to classify objects in images? Normally, the CNN’s last layer is used in a final Softmax among known classes of objects, assigning a probability that each object might be in the image. But if we remove that final layer, we can instead feed the CNN’s rich encoding of the image into a RNN designed to produce phrases. We can then train the whole system directly on images and their captions, so it maximizes the likelihood that descriptions it produces best match the training descriptions for each image.

The model combines a vision CNN with a language-generating RNN so it can take in an image and generate a fitting natural-language caption.

Our experiments with this system on several openly published datasets, including Pascal, Flickr8k, Flickr30k and SBU, show how robust the qualitative results are -- the generated sentences are quite reasonable. It also performs well in quantitative evaluations with the Bilingual Evaluation Understudy (BLEU), a metric used in machine translation to evaluate the quality of generated sentences.

A selection of evaluation results, grouped by human rating.

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but sometimes it’s the words that are most useful -- so it’s important we figure out ways to translate from images to words automatically and accurately. As the datasets suited to learning image descriptions grow and mature, so will the performance of end-to-end approaches like this. We look forward to continuing developments in systems that can read images and generate good natural-language descriptions. To get more details about the framework used to generate descriptions from images, as well as the model evaluation, read the full paper here.

Get a deeper view of your iOS app installs

If you use AdMob or other mobile ad networks to drive installs of iOS apps, here's some good news: iOS install tracking is coming as a Public Beta in a few weeks to all Google Analytics accounts. This detailed view of iOS install campaigns will be available right in your Google Analytics interface.

Optimize your iOS install marketing programs

Install metrics are a useful way to measure your marketing campaign performance. However, not all marketing efforts create the same volume and quality of users. With these new reports, you'll see how one source performs compared to another, so you can optimize your marketing spend. You can even dive deeper into the same marketing channel to see how one campaign or ad is performing compared to another. 

For instance: If users coming from source X tend to use your app once and abandon it, while users from source Y tend to use it for eight months and generate $68 each in value, you'll know. And with Google Analytics' powerful segmentation, you can combine post-download metrics with your acquisition channels across all Google Analytics reports, to make even better decisions for your marketing programs.

New iOS install tracking report (click image for full-size).

Beyond the install

Google Analytics Certified partner InfoTrust is already finding that the feature helps them measure and optimize install campaign performance.

"Many of our customers have mobile apps that generate more traffic and engagement than their desktop properties. Their goals are to bring users back to the app consistently and drive more engagement through more relevant articles and products, and increasing subscriptions or purchases. Seeing which marketing campaigns drive iOS users to app installs, and what users do after the install, is critical when determining where to use marketing spend."

Amin Shawki, Analytics Manager 

InfoTrust, LLC

Mobile ad networks integrated with the new reporting include Aarki, AdMob, AppLovin, Millennial Media, MdotM, Taptica and Tapjoy, with more to come soon. These iOS integrations join our existing Android campaign measurement tools.

Getting started

Learn more and get started easily with this step-by-step guide.

We hope this iOS integration helps you make even better choices for your business and for your customers. Happy mobile analyzing!

Posted by Rahul Oak, Product Manager, Google Analytics for Apps

Introducing Mobile App Analytics Fundamentals on Analytics Academy

So you’ve built an app? Awesome! But how are you tracking success? Does anyone know about your app? Do you have a good monetization plan? 

Today we’re excited to officially announce our newest Analytics Academy course, Mobile App Analytics Fundamentals, designed to help you answer these questions and more. 

Whether you’re an app developer or an experienced marketer in the mobile app space, knowing the fundamentals of mobile app measurement can help you improve your app marketing and monetization efforts. In this course, you’ll learn how to identify your most valuable users, how to find more of them, and how to tailor your monetization experience for different groups of users.

How it works

In this free online course, instructor Fontaine Foxworth will lead you through a series of conceptual training videos and interactive exercises to teach you about Mobile App Analytics. Throughout the course, she’ll use an example online gaming app called Go Fish!, which will demonstrate common Analytics use cases and help you apply what you learn to your own mobile app. 

After the course opens, you’ll have four weeks to earn a certificate of completion while working alongside a worldwide community of Analytics enthusiasts. In total, the course should take between two to four hours to complete.

Ready to sign up? Register now and join us when the course begins on Tuesday, November 18th.

We look forward to your participation in the course!

Post By: Christina Macholan & The Google Analytics Education Team

The World Parks Congress: Using technology to protect our natural environment

Posted by Dave Thau, Developer Advocate for Google Earth Engine and Karin Tuxen-Bettman, Program Manager, Google Earth Outreach

(Cross posted on the Official Google Australia Blog)

This week, thousands of people from more than 160 countries will gather in Sydney for the once-in-a-decade IUCN World Parks Congress to discuss the governance and management of protected areas. The Google Earth Outreach and Google Earth Engine teams will be at the event to showcase exemplars of how technology can help protect our environment.

Here are a few of the workshops and events happening in Sydney this week:

• Monday, November 10th - Tuesday, November 11th: Over the last couple of days, the Google Earth Outreach and Earth Engine teams delivered a 2-day hands-on workshop to develop the technical capacity of park managers, researchers, and communities. At this workshop, participants were introduced to Google mapping tools to help them with their conservation programs. 
• November 13 - 19: Google will be at the Oceans Pavilion inside the World Parks Congress to demonstrate how Trekker, Street View and Open Data Kit on Android mobile devices can assist with parks monitoring and management. 
• Friday, November 14, 9:30-10:30am: Join a Live Sydney Seahorse Hunt in Sydney Harbour, via Google Hangout, with Catlin Seaview Survey and Sydney Institute of Marine Science. Richard Vevers, Director of the Catlin Seaview Survey, will venture underwater to his favorite dive site and talk with experts about the unique marine life (including seahorses!) that explorers can expect to find around Sydney. Tune in here at 10:30am to catch all the action. 
• Saturday, November 15th, 8:30am: Networking for nature: the future is cool. Hear about how technology-driven ocean initiatives can help us better understand and strengthen our connection with our natural environments. WPCA-Marine’s plenary session will includes presentations by Sylvia Earle and Mission Blue, Catlin Seaview Survey, Google, Oceana, and SkyTruth. The session will also feature leading young marine professionals Mariasole Bianco and Rebecca Koss. 
• Saturday, November 15th, 12:15pm: We’ll be hosting a panel discussion on using Global Forest Watch to monitor protected areas in near-real-time. Global Forest Watch is a dynamic online alert system to help park rangers monitor and preserve vast stretches of parkland.
• Saturday, November 15th, 1:30 - 3:00pm: At the Biodiversity Pavilion join Walter Jetz from Yale and Dave Thau from Google for a presentation on Google Earth Engine and The Map of Life. The presentation will showcase how Google Earth Engine is being used in a variety of conservations efforts - including monitoring water resources, the health of the world's forests, and measuring the impact of protected areas on biodiversity preservation. We will also announce a new global resource from The Map of Life for mapping and monitoring biodiverse ecosystems. 

We believe that technology can help address some of our world’s most pressing environmental challenges and we look forward to working with Australian conservationists to integrate technology into their work.

You can find us at the Oceans Pavilion inside the World Parks Congress, where we will be joined by our environmental partners including The Jane Goodall Institute, The World Resources Institute and The Map of Life.

We hope to see you at one of our events this week!

Measure What Matters Most: A Marketer’s Guide

It’s no secret that it takes many marketing touchpoints to connect with a customer, find a quality lead, or make a sale. But how do you know the right message to deliver at each point in that journey? How do you ensure that your investments are working, and that you’re not wasting money and resources, or worse, alienating your customers?

Better measurement is the answer. It’s the key to understanding and making the most of these interconnected touchpoints, but it's not always top of mind when building marketing campaigns.

Today, we’re releasing Measure What Matters Most: A Marketer’s Guide to help marketers make sense of today’s complex customer journey by laying a solid measurement foundation.



In this brief guide, we’ll look at four crucial tenets of measurement-focused marketing:

1. Focus on the right metrics. Set yourself up for success by identifying clear metrics that you want to affect before launching a campaign.
2. Value your best customers. Instead of measuring transactions alone, model the lifetime value you derive from your customers.
3. Attribute value across the journey. To find out what’s working in your marketing and what’s not, identify the role of each touchpoint along the customer’s journey.
4. Prove marketing impact. Use controlled experimentation to understand what happened only because of a given marketing spend change (and would not have happened without it).

Collectively, these points show how better measurement can improve campaign effectiveness, help you get the credit you deserve for your programs and, most importantly, ensure a better return on investment for all of your marketing. Download “Measure What Matters Most: A Marketer’s Guide” to find out how.

Posted by Sara Jablon Moked, Product Marketing Manager, Google Analytics

Brian Gavin Diamonds Sees 60% Increase in Customer Checkout with Enhanced Ecommerce

"Enhanced Ecommerce in Google Analytics made it extremely easy to analyze the metrics that are important to an ecommerce site and garner the insights to make smart changes to our website, driving significant improvements in performance!"

-- Danny Gavin, VP and Director of Marketing at Brian Gavin Diamonds

Our Enhanced Ecommerce features in Google Analytics are officially out of beta today, complete with brand new tools like Product Attribution. Combined with our new Shopping Campaigns report, Google Analytics provides our retail clients with an integrated view of their customers. As part of today’s announcements, we’re also excited to highlight partnerships with Shopify, PrestaShop, Blue Acorn for Magento, and mShopper. Using Enhanced Ecommerce in conjunction with our partners’ products simplifies the implementation process and gives you a full set of tools to create and optimize your ecommerce site. Please see the end of this post for more information about our partners’ solutions.

Understand customer behavior

Enhanced Ecommerce provides insight into the customer’s path to purchase, like when customers added items to cart, started the checkout process, and completed a purchase. Importantly, Enhanced Ecommerce gives you the ability to identify segments of customers who are falling out of the shopping funnel. You can then focus on these high intent-to-purchase customers with remarketing or by optimizing your checkout flow. Brian Gavin Diamonds, a Texas-based jewelry design house that is renowned for its signature hearts and arrows diamonds and custom jewelry design, used Enhanced Ecommerce to discover that in a single month they had missed out on more than half a million dollars in sales due to cart abandonment at the customer login page.  The company worked quickly to optimize their checkout flow with guest checkout functionality and immediately realized a 60% increase in customers completing the checkout process to payment.  You can read more about Brian Gavin Diamonds’ success with Enhanced Ecommerce in our case study.

Optimize online merchandising to increase sales 

Once you’ve gotten users to your site, Enhanced Ecommerce allows you to optimize the onsite experience to drive sales. By using Product Lists, you can identify how customers are discovering and interacting with products before purchasing them. Armed with this information, you can analyze your onsite promotions in order to build a more effective merchandising strategy, or use the product attribution functionality to understand which product lists drive conversions.

In an increasingly mobile world, this information is critically important since screen real estate is limited and must be used wisely. For retailers with mobile apps, the Google Analytics SDK fully supports Enhanced Ecommerce, so you can do rich analysis of product performance and customer behavior across all sales channels.  Across both desktop and mobile, Enhanced Ecommerce delivers the information you need to increase sales on your site.

Drive revenue with Shopping Campaign reports

Today, we’re also introducing a new Shopping Campaigns report as part of the AdWords reporting section in Google Analytics.  This feature will be rolled out over the next few weeks and will allow you to analyze the performance of your shopping campaigns.  With this functionality, you’ll have the ability to understand the product categories/types that are driving site engagement and revenue and use this information to optimize your bids.  So, how can you get started?  If you have already linked your Adwords and your Google Analytics accounts, this report will automatically appear in the Adwords reporting section of your Analytics account.  Not linked yet?  Simply follow these instructions to link the two accounts.

Get Enhanced Ecommerce with our partner integrations

Shopify, PrestaShop, Blue Acorn for Magento, and mShopper have partnered with us to integrate Enhanced Ecommerce as part of their ecommerce solutions. If you’re using one of these platforms, you can take advantage of Enhanced Ecommerce by enabling one of these pre-built integrations.  Shopify and Blue Acorn's solutions are available today while solutions for Prestashop and mShopper will be available in the coming week. To learn more about our featured partners, please visit our partner page. 

Google Analytics Enhanced Ecommerce is built to help you understand your customers and optimize your sales conversions. Combined with Shopping Campaign reports, Google Analytics is a complete solution for ecommerce businesses.  For more information about how to implement this feature in your Google Analytics account, please see the documentation available in our help center.

Posted by Marcia Jung, Product Manager, on behalf of the Google Analytics team

More about our partners

Shopify

Shopify is a commerce platform that allows anyone to easily sell online, at their retail location, and everywhere in between. Shopify offers a professional online storefront, a payment solution to accept credit cards, a point of sale system to power retail sales and a card reader to process credit card transactions through a mobile phone. Shopify currently powers over 120,000 retailers in 150 different countries, including: Tesla Motors, Gatorade, Google, Wikipedia, LA Lakers, CrossFit, and many more. 

PrestaShop

PrestaShop is a world industry leader in Open Source solutions for ecommerce, whose mission is to challenge ecommerce limits by developing a powerful solution that is accessible to anyone, anywhere. Through the Open Source software, PrestaShop allows everyone to create online stores quickly, easily and for free. The company currently counts more than 200,000 online stores worldwide, 700,000 community members and over 4 million software downloads.

Blue Acorn

Blue Acorn is a premium eCommerce agency dedicated to helping retailers and brands achieve revenue growth through a comprehensive, data-driven approach. In order to best support this approach, they became the first Magento Solution Partner in the world to also hold certified partnerships with Google and Optimizely. By integrating data and testing throughout their services, they are able to help their clients make the best decisions possible and further support their best-in-class design, development, and optimization capabilities.

mShopper

mShopper is a leading mobile commerce platform that allows retailers to create custom, mobile-optimized e-commerce sites designed specifically to increase sales on mobile devices. The integration with Enhanced Ecommerce will provide a dramatic impact on mobile commerce conversions for retailers by delivering superior insight on product sales and overall campaign performance. mShopper recently launched mStore® v4.1 with marketing tools and a performance dashboard to drive conversions and improve sales for customers using mobile devices as well.

Googler Shumin Zhai awarded with the ACM UIST Lasting Impact Award

Posted by Alfred Spector, Vice President, Engineering

Recently, at the 27th ACM User Interface Software and Technology Symposium (UIST’14), Google Senior Research Scientist Shumin Zhai and University of Cambridge Lecturer Per Ola Kristensson received the 2014 Lasting Impact Award for their seminal paper SHARK²: a large vocabulary shorthand writing system for pen-based computers. Most simply put, this is one of those rare works that is responsible for fundamental and lasting advances in the industry, and is the basis for the rapidly growing number of keyboards that use gesture typing, including products such as ShapeWriter, Swype, SwiftKey, SlideIT, TouchPal, and Google Keyboard.

First presented 10 years ago at UIST’04, Shumin and Per Ola’s paper is a pioneering work on word-gesture keyboard interaction that described the architecture, algorithms and interfaces of a high-capacity multi-channel gesture recognition system-SHARK². SHARK² increased recognition accuracy and relaxed precision requirements by using the shape and location of gestures in addition to context based language models. In doing so, Shumin and Per Ola delivered a paradigm of touch screen gesture typing as an efficient method for text entry that has continued to drive the development of mobile text entry across the industry.

"Awarded for its scientific contribution of algorithms, insights, and user interface considerations essential to the practical realization of large-vocabulary shape-writing systems for graphical keyboards, laying the groundwork for new research, industrial applications, and widespread user benefit."

Prior to joining Google in 2011, Shumin worked at the IBM Almaden Research Center for 15 years, where he originated and led the SHARK project, further developing and refining it to include a low latency recognition engine that introduced the ability to accurately recognize a large vocabulary of words based upon the patterns (sokgraphs) drawn on a touchscreen device. SHARK and SHARK² subsequently continued further development as ShapeWriter. During his tenure at IBM, Shumin additionally pursued a wide variety of HCI research areas including, but not limited to, studying the ease and efficiency of HCI interfaces, camera phone based motion sensing, and cross-device user experience.

At Google, Shumin has continued to inspire the Human-Computer Interaction research community, publishing prolifically and leading a group that incorporates HCI research, machine learning, statistical language modeling and mobile computing to advance the state of the art of text input for smart touchscreen keyboards. Building on his earlier work with SHARK/ShapeWriter, Gesture Typing is just one of the innovations that make things like typing messages on mobile device easier for hundreds of millions of people each day, and remains one of the most prominent features on Android keyboards.

Shumin has been highly active in academia during his career, as both visiting professor and lecturer at world-class universities, and is currently the Editor-in-Chief of ACM Transactions on Computer- Interaction, a Fellow of the ACM and a Member of the CHI Academy. We’re proud to congratulate Shumin and Per Ola on receiving one of the most prestigious honors in the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research community, and look forward to their future contributions.