Google Analytics Desktop Version Gets Material Design UI Refresh and New Features

Google Analytics, the ubiquitous usage analytics service for the Web and apps, is getting a much-needed user interface overhaul for its desktop version. Launched in the November of 2005, this ten-year-old service has received a facelift in accordance with Material Design; Google’s design language introduced along with Android 5.0 Lollipop in 2014, that most Google already apps use. A blog post on the matter suggests that along with the attempt to make the UI simpler, efforts have been taken to “retain the key functionality that people still use”.

Among improvements include the uncluttering of the ‘Customisation’ tab, which now brings the dashboard, custom reports, custom alerts combined into one tab, instead of individual items on the left pane. Clicking the top header now lets you quickly switch views from any page you're on. Logging into Google Analytics now takes you to the view you were looking at the last time, saving an additional click when compared to the previous iteration. Users can also change the default date range that Google Analytics loads with; so if a user prefers loading a 7 day report on every login instead of the typical 30 day report, one can do so from the user settings.

Along with adding new features, a few others have been given the boot as well. For instance Automatic Intelligence Events have been removed from Google Analytics. It will be replaced with the automated insights delivered by the Analytics Assistant, akin to the Google Assistant feature available on the Google Photos or Allo apps, that suggests actionable insights based on the data. Also chucked from the updated version is In-Page Analytics, but the feature is still accessible using the company’s Chrome Extension.

It is also suggested that there are other improvements not mentioned that will roll out subsequently to users in the coming months.