In one of my earliest post I mentioned that we are currently testing GA for some our sites. I am still impressed by the tool and what it allows web analyst to do free of charge. Some of they key benefits I see is so far
- Easy & quick to implement (especially when you track many sites, or third party coop partners this is critical)
- User friendly interface in English but also in Chinese (e.g. localization)
- Easy access to segmentation and comparisons, which allows quick on the spot analysis
- Great geo visualization. Each country and city within the country is displayed on clear map. This allows great segmentation based in city tier and provide. ( Other tool do that as well, but I have never seen it visualized as well)
So far my only gripe is with the geo segmentation. We have run 2 campaign with large partners, and implemented GA in their site. In both campaigns (Among the several million visitors), the most popular location is WuZhong city. "a prefecture-level city in the Ningxia autonomous region of the People's Republic of China." according to Wikipedia. This just plain makes no sense. Beijing I can understand, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen? Maybe. But Wuzhong? It seems some 3rd party data vendor has messed up, or its just all the unknowns that are put into the Wuzhong bucket. Ningxia jokes anyone?
Anyway, GA is a great product, and wider acceptance (with smart analysis) in China will certainly drive the ecosystem to become more effective and rational.
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