After our recent membership seminar, I was asked by a number of people if we have any techniques for getting senior stakeholders to take digital seriously and release budget for digital projects.

The answer is yes, and of course the easiest way to secure buy-in and get cross-organisational support is to employ an agency like us to cut through internal structures and politics in a stakeholder engagement exercise that delivers a digital roadmap for the future. However, getting to the point of commissioning work like this is often too fraught with internal obstacles. I can say though that having worked with many very complex and multi-faceted organisations, it is evident that there are similarities between them which can be used as catalysts for change.

Where to start?
A digital vision needs to be owned by the whole organisation, which means it has to have buy-in from the top. However, as we all know it is often difficult to get the idea of a cohesive and holistic digital strategy across to those who are likely to release the budget to produce it. This is to say that unless your CEO is a digital evangelist, you will have to prove the benefits of digital first in order to get the idea of a digital future on the agenda.

The best way to get people to take you seriously is to marry your objectives with those of your organisation. So, start with your organisation’s aims and objectives. It is up to you to understand these aims and objectives, and how elements of a digital strategy might help your organisation meet them. You also need to understand the communication and business priorities for individual departments, and the personal objectives, motivations and enthusiasms of the individuals responsible for departmental delivery. Having an intimate knowledge of all this will ensure you are in a good position to attract the attention of a sympathetic ear.

Don’t mention digital, your website, Facebook or Twitter!
Armed with your in-depth understanding of the business and the individuals involved, it is time to state your case. But – Don’t talk ‘digital’! It is no good saying ‘our website isn’t up to scratch; I need £40k to revamp it’. Instead say, ‘I can improve retention rates and attract more members’. Don’t say ‘I think we need a Facebook page’, say ‘I can get 100 signatures on our petition to government’ and instead of mentioning Twitter, ask how valuable 200 more influencers having awareness of your agenda would be to the organisation.

Three options
What and how you pitch needs to be rooted in your understanding of your organisation. You need to ensure that your proposal resonates with your target audience and offers value to as many internal departments as possible. Here are three classifications and approaches to help you. They are not definitive, and there will be elements of each in every organisation, but they should all be part of your broader digital vision, and aimed at demonstrating tangible ROI in order to secure future budget and enthusiasm for digital.

The Hygiene Pitch
For the vain, paranoid
If your organisation sees itself as leading, or if it is scared of being usurped by other organisations, then adopt the hygiene pitch. This is designed to put the case for a website revamp. The case should rely upon competitive analysis and an understanding of your users as well as where your site sits relative to current trends. At a guess I can guarantee your site isn’t mobile-friendly, cannot be personalised, does not have optimised content, or use the latest coding standards, and is not integrating common social channels.

Present a comparison of your site and those of your competitors, highlighting where they are doing things better than you, and include examples from outside of the sector to highlight what you could be doing. Also produce stats that prove things such as search engine position and the number of people accessing your site via mobile.

Your aim should be to demonstrate the benefits of future-proofing your website as a basis for a broader digital initiative.

The Campaign Pitch
For the risk averse, archaic
If your organisation doesn’t get digital then adopt the campaign pitch. This approach should be driven by a clear objective, which will resonate with your stakeholders. It is really important not to mention technology immediately, but rather to talk business. Central to this pitch is a business case which promises a return on investment, such as getting 200 people to sign a petition to government.

Your aim is to create a digital campaign that delivers value to members and the organisation, in order to strengthen your case for future digital projects.

The Tactical Pitch
For the poor, complacent
If you have very little budget, or everyone thinks that there is little wrong with their digital activity adopt the tactical pitch. This approach picks a small aspect of the hygiene approach and remedies it. So for instance if your application process is obstructive, and in need of refinement, produce the statistics and stories that affirm this and a methodology to put it right.

Your aim is to drum up the enthusiasm for more digital work, leading to a site re-vamp.

What next?
Assuming you pitched it right, and there is an available budget, which does not have to be that much for the tactical and campaign approaches, then your next job is to implement. But before you do, make sure you have the benchmarks and measurement tools in place to prove your success.

From this point it is likely to be a bit of a slow burn, but make sure that you communicate your successes regularly, either formally to project sponsors, or informally at the ‘water-cooler’. When you have solid evidence of ROI go back and ask for more. Ultimately you will be able to ask ‘Shall we call Precedent now and commission a digital strategy?’ and the CEO should say ‘yes’.

In my next blog I will be describing an approach to produce a digital strategy.

With graduation only three months away, and the final hurdle fast approaching, I felt my placement at Precedent could be my most important one to date. Previously I had been mentored by Ed Richards (senior designer, Precedent Cardiff) for a live brief at Cardiff Met. Within that short space of regular one hour discussions, I always took away something positive and a fresh perspective. Hungry for more, I was keen to reunite with my former mentor.

The two weeks I spent at Precedent where highly enjoyable and memorable. Not only did I learn so much about the industry I’m passionate about, but essentially what makes it so great.. and that’s the people!

Precedent’s friendly, welcoming vibe allowed me to slip right in and feel at home. They allowed me to explore creative avenues, ideas and thoughts in a number of discussions and presentations.

I had the opportunity to work with an existing brand, where I had to create my own visuals and icons for that brand which were approved by the client. At the other end of the spectrum I also had the chance to research for a project and come up with my own concepts, which will hopefully have some input into the final outcome.

It was great to have the opportunity to meet Paul Hoskins and watch him work with the other designers, Ed and Mark. At first I just wanted to observe and take in everything that was said, but in the end I couldn’t help but chip in. The post it exercise Paul lead is an interesting way of tackling a design brief, and one I’ll look to practice in the future.

Precedent’s encouragement has given me a new found confidence that I hope to use as momentum in the coming months. I felt I was able to really thrive and be myself within those two weeks. I had seen myself primarily working in print and branding, but after this experience I definitely wouldn’t rule out working digitally.

Thanks to everyone at Precedent for giving me this opportunity, I thoroughly enjoyed being a part of your team and appreciate everyone’s help! Grateful is an understatement.

Are you a student or recent graduate looking to expand your experience by working with an agency? Send Keith your CV with details of the kind of work you’re interested in to find out more.

Google’s gross annual revenue from mobile advertising is over US$2.5 billion per year*.

eBay expects mobile customers to buy and sell $8 billion of merchandise in 2012*.

PayPal expects to see $7 billion in mobile payment volume in 2012*.

Mobile is big business. Digital experiences that are locked in to where you are and what you’re doing, that emphasise convenience and cater for people on the move (and sat on the sofa) are making the most of mobile technologies and context-based services. Gesture and voice based interactions have introduced a new way of interacting with the web, driving innovation and influencing customer behaviours and expectations.

So what does mobile mean for your organisation?
Positive online experiences are good for business. As more and more of your customers interact with your products and services via handheld devices – and they are, just check your stats – the mobile experience will increasingly influence how your customers perceive your company. If you haven’t already tried, have a go at browsing your website on a smartphone to get a sense of what your customers see. Warning: it’s not always pretty viewing.

Times have changed and websites that (should) work well on desktop monitors do not tend to translate well to tablets or phones. Quite simply, layouts that work well on big screens do not work well on small screens.

So how do you get it right?
Technology evolves, user behaviours evolve, expectations evolve – but the one constant in ‘getting it right’ is focussing on the needs of your user. Whether you’re looking to optimise your desktop experience on handheld devices, or using mobile designs to influence your desktop offering, the best digital experiences combine the needs of your business with the needs of your customer. There are a number of paths you can take. Responsive designs allow navigation, page layouts and feature sets to change depending on the device your site is viewed on. Dedicated mobile websites optimise designs specifically for mobile devices, and of course mobile apps can integrate closely with inbuilt phone and tablet features.

The name of the game is making it as easy as possible for your customers to do what you want them to do – whether that’s buying more of your stuff, consuming more of your content or interacting with your services. If you can also make that experience enjoyable then there’s a better chance they’ll do it again. Good for your customer, good for your business. Taking the time to really think about your customers, to understand their motivations and their needs is the first step to crafting that great experience. Combining that insight with a deep understanding of how people use mobile devices will help ensure that you can optimise your designs, and if you can do that you’re definitely on the right path.

*Stats for Google, eBay and Paypal sourced via mobiThinking.com

Attendees at Thursday’s seminar to launch our new sector report, Membership organisations: big challenges, digital answers? were both captivated and entertained by Michelle’s account of how the Institution of Engineering and Technology is embracing the digital world.

In her role as Membership and Professional Development Director at the IET since 2006, Michelle has overseen a real life digital implementation journey that has its roots in the IET’s strategic vision and objectives for the 21st century.

Michelle started her talk by revealing a visualisation of the IET’s strategy, a remarkably concise and instantly understandable diagram that rather impressively represents the consolidation of a ’72 slide deck’!

Despite not being one of our clients, and with us not knowing exactly what Michelle was going to say in her presentation, the resonance between the approach adopted by the IET to their digital development and the recommendations contained in our report was quite deafening. Michelle showed us how consideration of the IET’s strategic priorities combined with an understanding of her members’ life stage engagement with the IET has manifested itself in an innovation roadmap which directly translates into a series of digital initiatives.

Michelle revealed how it had not all been plain sailing as when the IET decided to produce a digital version of its magazine for potential young Indian members. Despite this apparently innovative approach she revealed that the digital magazine had not gone down well with its intended audience as the students wanted a printed magazine to show their parents in support of their career choice.

Much more successful and very impressive was Michelle’s description of the IET’s work in China where they maintain a Chinese language microsite and a presence on the largest social networking site (Weibo) maintained by Chinese members.

Attendees were also impressed by the IET having managed to rationalise its web presence into a series of vertical, audience specific sections as well as its development of its own TV site.

Michelle concluded by saying that there was still lots of work to be done, and to the surprise of some attendees pointed out that despite all that had been achieved in creating a very good website the journey was by no means over since part of the IET’s plan is to review and potentially redesign the site in the next couple of years.

One thing that was evident from Michelle’s presentation was the commitment of the IET as a whole to a digital, forward-thinking future. Talking to delegates it was clear that for many the lack of senior buy-in to a similar strategic digital future was one of the biggest barriers they faced.

In the coming weeks I will be highlighting the steps that need to be taken to embed digital in your organisation’s psyche and how to obtain senior stakeholder buy-in.

In the meantime, have a peak at the slides from the event and do please join the Digital Membership Professionals LinkedIn group where we hope to facilitate debate and discussion for you and your peers around the digital landscape for membership organisations.

In our digital finance report Integration or Isolation? and subsequent digital finance forum we showed a range of great examples for social engagement in financial service organisations. This included the @RBS_Economics insight tweets, @SkandiaTeamGBR’s digital curation of its own content and other relevant information sources and @Zopa’s really personal customer service approach. We also looked at Fidelity’s proactive Facebook page and how some firms such as Investec are starting to maintain their LinkedIn company pages.

At the forum the biggest single issue shared with us during the roundtables was the challenge of compliance. Feedback from the event stressed how much marketers were looking to Precedent and similar digital agencies to answer their compliance challenges. Clearly we can’t alone answer what are often complex regulatory challenges. Keen to take on the challenge we proposed a roundtable event under Chatham House Rules to get marketers and compliance professionals together to explore these issues and hopefully find some positive recommendations.

Unsurprisingly the interest from marketers was high, but we didn’t simply want a therapy session. We asked marketers to approach their compliance teams, invite someone along to join in the debate, share their expertise and identify creative solutions. The result? Not a single compliance professional willing to engage, most ironically citing ‘compliance reasons’!

This is a desperately sad state of affairs. Whilst compliance professionals are clearly the gate keepers who must by definition be risk adverse, can there really be risks in simply discussing the issues, exploring the opportunities and building a shared understanding and consensus with the marketeers? Whilst this stubborn and frankly uncooperative attitude persists amongst compliance professionals, opportunities will be missed.

Those few who are willing to grasp the nettle and work together will inevitably achieve competitive advantage, and grab market-share. With innovative providers emerging ranging from Zopa, to Nutmeg and Borro, incumbents who believe the right answer is simply to bury their heads in the sand may look back and realise that they were exacerbating risk, not managing it.

If you own or manage a website and you don’t yet know that you need to comply with the UK privacy legislation (aka The Cookie Law), you’re probably in the wrong job.

The law was passed last May but UK websites have been granted an additional year by the Information Commissioners Office (or the ICO, the body enforcing the law in the UK) to implement this. If you don’t get up to speed and take the necessary steps, you will be liable for a fine of up to £500,000.

You have until the 25th May 2012 to become complaint, and time is running out.

What does it all mean?
In essence, it is now a legal requirement that you ask for consent (opt-in) if your site uses cookies (small packets of data). However, to confuse matters, if a cookie is “strictly necessary” for the site to function (such as for a shopping basket) you “might” not have to ask for consent. But what does “strictly necessary” and “might” mean?

This law appears to be ultimately aimed at – although not exclusively – behavioural targeting (ads) and potentially analytics which use and leave cookies stored on your computer to use at a later point to track your online behaviour or display ads based on your preferences.

Why is this change taking place?
The reason for this is simple. There has been public discord to the seeming disregard to privacy via assumed consent by advertisers and certain companies (whom I won’t name but one such company was the subject of a 2010 film starring Jesse Eisenburg and Justin Timberlake), and the EU has responded.

Now it is easy and quite good fun to denounce the EU as egotistical and sycophantic, doing its utmost to put EU businesses at a distinct disadvantage in difficult times – as this only applies to the EU while the rest of the world duly ignores it.

Confused?
The ICO guidance isn’t making things any clearer. It states: “if the organisation is UK-based, the laws will clearly apply whether the website is hosted in the UK or overseas.” Great. But unfortunately it goes on to say: “Those corporations outside the UK or Europe are advised that their users in the UK will expect clear information about cookies too.” Really? This just goes to show the preposterous laughable ineptitude of those involved in passing this law have when it comes to considering the WORLD wide web! See how I highlighted “world” there.

But despite the approach, concerns about privacy exist and needs to be addressed. I have not met many people 100% comfortable with the various “unsavoury” practices which are fuelled by cookies on the web today, even if they don’t know what they are, and shouldn’t their concerns (our customers) be our concerns too?

It’s just a shame the rest of the world looks set to ignore them.

What are the cookie options available to you?

a) Ask for cookie consent (opt-in)
All cookies need to be individually listed before they can be used with the explanation of their purpose which probably should appear on every page for the first time a user visits your site. Consent cannot be implied. The positive outcome is that the user will make an informed choice and opt-in, while the process will educate them about the information they’re sharing online.

But will this really result in people giving consent? I think that’s somewhat unlikely and I can only assume that many people will choose not to accept cookies.

It’s also going to cost you money to implement and potentially (depending on your business) diminish the data you capture which shapes how you serve your customers online. Not to mention that asking in the first place will inevitably affect the overall user experience.

There is, however, another piece of confusing information in the guidelines about “non-intrusive” cookies, which might or might not mean Google Analytics. Apparently, Google has been careful not to associate Google Analytics with any personally indefinable information. Should we consider that Google Analytics is a “highly unlikely priority” for formal action? I would like an official statement about this from the ICO and at the very least provided with some guidance to help us out! Oh and it’s been widely reported that Google are struggling to create a system to comply with this directive so if anyone else can enlighten me I would be grateful.

b) Remove the features from your site which require cookies
This action is the sure fire way to resolve the issue and it would give your site visitors the least disruptive experience but inevitably, would reduce the level of business intelligence gained (unless Google Analytics is found to be exempt).
You might have to face up to a reduction of the commercial value of your site by removing the ability to target through ads. No great loss I hear you cry and so do I until I think of what will happen when those services, which are currently free, seek alternative revenue streams. Advertising and cookies start to look appealing to me once more.

c) Ignore the law
Is that a risk you’re willing to take? Is it going to give you sleepless nights knowing you are responsible for the repercussions? Or could it be that you are ignoring the law in the vain hope that at the 11th hour the ICO will have a change of heart, or those who provide the services will completely reworked their systems not to use cookies in time.

If you are, I hope you have an understanding development team or agency just sitting there waiting for the phone to ring if the cavalry doesn’t show up.

d) Adapt: alternatives
There are alternatives out there such as eVisit Analyst which claim to be an analytic alternative that doesn’t use cookies, however, they are not free and I would advise you do your own due diligence here. Bear in mind change is also dependent on logistics, training and how integrated your infrastructure is. This could mean changing a lot of systems at a large overall cost to your business.

So where do you start?
• Audit your site for all cookies
• Assess which ones are necessary and which are not
• Decide how you address those you wish to keep
• Make sure these are also listed in your privacy policy (which is actually a requirement now)
• Speak to your PMs/developers and plan, plan, plan…

If that is too difficult a decision to make you will either have to remove all of them or place an opt-in for all of them from May onwards.

It is apparent that there are many ambiguities, uncertainties and differing interpretations of the ICO guidance. Don’t worry you’re not the only one who’s confused. For now, my only advice would be to make sure you have at least read the ICO guidance document, keep up to date with the debate and if you are completely mystified seek out proper legal opinion.

In the meantime, please add your comments and let’s see if we can sort out this confusion.

Missed the last month’s Precedent Digital Finance Forum? To our delight, the roundtable discussions quickly sparked participants swapping success stories for overcoming compliance restrictions and old fashioned thinking towards social media and blogging.

Here are just a few of the tried and tested solutions cherry picked as highlights from those roundtable talks. Have a read through and let us know your own experiences in the comments.

1. Thought-leadership and social media: the perfect match
Rather than use social media and blogs to push products, offering helpful and impartial information hasn’t just proved an effective strategy for major players like City Index or Lloyds TSB, it’s also bang on trend.
Stats from Google Insight reveal that DIY-style searches are significantly on the rise as users discover that adding ‘how to’ to a search string lets them skip the sales pitch and get straight to the content.

2. Softly-softly catches management approval
If you’re working at a less digitally forward-thinking institution, members of the forum found starting with a small and easily approved by compliance piece of digital activity gave them the stats and evidence for management to green-light larger initiatives.
The bottom line being if you’re speaking to management, talk return on investment and not blogs or Twitter. This means setting up the right tracking in advance – whether it’s Google Analytics for your website, buzz monitoring for the web as a whole, or bespoke tracking for your social media profiles – and knowing what metrics to track and how to interpret them.

Number of followers or ‘likes’ doesn’t mean anything to management (or to your bottom line), so instead look at who specifically is following you, identify how many are in your target audience groups, and then measure how they’re interacting with the content you post (e.g. sharing it, commenting on it, asking questions, etc.).

3. Compliance-friendly Twitter
Participants were impressed with how Lloyds TSB had managed extending its customer service arm into Twitter. By identifying itself as the official account for Lloyds and clearly telling users not to tweet their personal details, the bank has created a commendable compliance and user-friendly Twitter presence.

When questioned about concerns over security, participants were surprised to learn Twitter has actually helped fight fraud in some cases for Lloyds – for example, users being able to immediately report suspicious emails and texts falsely claiming to be from the bank asking for their personal details.

For staffing the Twitter operation, Lloyds followed the same advice we always give for social media: pick staff with the right knowledgebase who are already using the network and train them up with house rules and ideas for content on how to engage on the company’s behalf.

By now you’re probably wishing you’d taken part in the discussions…but it’s not too late! Leave your thoughts below and if you have any questions, feel free to post them here or contact us directly.

Next week a little reaction from the mobile debate.

As promised, here is the first of a short series of follow-up blogs on our second Digital Finance Forum. Please feel free to comment below, and let’s keep the conversation going using #PrecSem.

After our initial forum in September last year we anticipated that compliance issues would be high on the agenda for delegates attending the forum yesterday at the Merchant Taylors Hall in the City.

With this in mind, as those of you who attended yesterday discovered, we attempted to recruit two, or three people with experience of dealing with compliance to help us facilitate a panel debate on the subject.
The irony was of course that none of the people we approached could get the clearance from compliance to participate. Excuse this use of text speak but,  – LOL!

However, we were determined to embrace the subject and tryto focus on positive approaches to common problems, rather than turn the morning into a ‘compliance-bashing exercise’.

In the round table discussions some interesting approaches to using the social sphere successfully and in an ‘obedient’ fashion were discussed. Here are some tips from people who are making it work that we extrapolated from the tables, interestingly they all appear to have synergy with the advice we provided in our presentations:

1. Start Small – Taking small steps into social media can be an effective way to
   ensure that senior stakeholders and legal teams get used to the idea, and are
   more open to further development. Consider testing the water with a campaign
   that has a definite end date. Establish success criteria, run the campaign and
   use the results to either encourage further uptake, or disregard/refine your
   approach.
2. Have a cross-channel strategy – For peace of mind. Get down on paper a procedure that describes what you will do if things do go wrong in the social landscape. Identify potential escalation points and the correct channels to use to deal with them. (You might need a press release at some point)
3. Getting buy in – Senior stakeholders can be nervous about embracing social media. When proposing uptake concentrate on presenting the high-level combination of benefits rather than the detail.
4. Resourcing – As Mark Sherwin proposed in his effective digital strategy piece, identifying people within your organisation who already understand and use social platforms to become your voice is often a great way to hit the ground
   running. One major bank told us how they had pulled people from their call centre who were already keen on Twitter, trained them and now use them to provide customer service via the channel.
5. Educate your staff and your customers – If both parties in a social interaction are aware of the boundaries then social platforms can be used effectively to mutual benefit. For instance, understanding when a conversation needs to move to DM on Twitter will ensure compliance. Produce, and present clearly, carefully worded instructions and guidelines for staff and customers.

What do you think about these tips? Go on, speak your mind below

Here are yesterday’s slides:

Part One – Introduction, Research, Rich Media and Blogging
Part Two – Social Networks, Mobile and Websites
Part Three – Effective Digital Strategy

Any improvement in digital connectivity speeds across Scotland will be very welcome – in rural communities and remote towns we still watch the Windows egg-timer ask us to be patient or we notice our mobile phones give up on that last download as we leave yet another 3G or even GPRS zone. Therefore, recent positive talk from those involved in the Scottish Government Action Plan and the use of terms such as ‘digital boost‘ in Scotland fill me with hope.

At Precedent we strive to deliver optimal digital experiences and we need the connectivity promised. Personally, and from a Precedent viewpoint, I can’t wait.  We are told the best internet speeds we can expect are up to 300MBPs with a current average of 6.8 MBPs.  Working recently in the north of Scotland I achieve a broadband speed of less than 1MBPs and even when home working (a working style keenly promoted by the Scottish Government), in commuting distance from Edinburgh, I get little more than 2MBPs!

What will 4G on mobile and the implementation of super fast broadband mean for Scotland? Opportunities for companies and the economy to grow through digital innovation and for rural communities to feel fully part of the worldwide internet cloud.  I look forward to seeing the timeline as the plan is launched, but 2020 does seem all long way off.

Well it’s the end of an era for Google Analytics: come end of January 2012 they plan to replace the current interface we have all learnt to love and use with the new dashboard and features that they’ve been promoting for a while (Some may have already jumped shipped to the new interface as we’ve all had the chance for a while to change to the new!).

So what does this actually mean for all of us? And is it time to panic? Well I’d like to think that it’s nothing too serious to worry about, and for most, it will all be fine. But for some of the regular users like me that use some of the more obscure reports, it does mean some annoyance as they are being laid to rest (RIP).

But before running for the hills (or the likes of other great analytics packages such as Mint, etc.) be aware that some of these reports can still be found – but in the strangest of places – namely as “secondary dimensions” or via “advanced segments” for some of the traditional reports. As per the old interface these act as additional “parameters” for filtering reports. For example, the great old screen resolutions reports is now stored/shown as a secondary dimension in the browser report.

So what’s the hype or moan about? Well, with my like for spaghetti westerns – here’s my take on the good, the bad and the plain ugly….

The Good
The GA team has promised that the new interface will (and does) bring us lots of new features, and in the near future too. For example you can now benefit from the rather cool “real time” overview which shows what users are currently doing on your site. You can find out how they are getting to you and what they are currently doing – maybe a bit big brother watching, but everyone I’ve shown it to loves it.

We can now finally have more than one dashboard! I can now finally have a “set” dashboard for each of my roles: editor, admin, dev/hosting, etc. without having to either log in/out four times or sacrifice dashboard real estate for my reports.

Another great little feature are the “social” integration reports: originally you had to rely on scanning your ShareThis or AddThis reports to see how people were using your site to make social engagements e.g. social bookmarking, tweeting about an article, etc. However, the new GA interface brings this into your main system – and currently supports the two players mentioned, along with their own Google Plus buttons. You can also extend other facilities using the new “tracksocial” method on your code as well – more info can be found on Google’s Social Interaction Analytics page.

The dedicated “mobile” section is also a nice thought – though all the information contained here was readily available from the old interface, the GA team have nicely grouped it and taken it out of the main section. It keeps the mobile fans happy with being able to easily see traffic that’s hitting your site via mobiles/tablets.

My favourite feature however, (closely followed by the gimmick real time feature) has to be the visitor flow. This is a clever bit of functionality that allows you to easily see how visitors have interacted on your site – including entrance and exit pages. Personally I think it shows a lot of information in a more friendly outlay and allows you to get the information you want a lot quicker than fishing through half a dozen reports in the old interface. So definitely a thumbs up here for that report!

The bad
As you’ve guessed, the new interface isn’t all plain sailing! In fact, I’ve had a tantrum or two when unable to easily find some of the reports I used for different clients on reviews. After searching and searching, I eventually found them as secondary dimensions.

I also don’t think the GA team has done the best job to help users migrate over easily. They still haven’t created a way to migrate custom reporting over (so it looks like you’ll have to manually do that) and more worryingly, they removed the familiar “help” link which was always useful to not-so-familiar users. This would have been handy for users unfamiliar with the new reports – but instead you now need to trawl through the web for unofficial help.

And the plain ugly…
The “review” panel for the list of accounts you have has gone in favour of a god-awful search/listing feature. You no longer have a nice tabled layout showing some “brief” summary information (and whether your site has gone up/down) in traffic percentage. It’s all gone in favour of a cumbersome and ugly listing, which if you have anything more than 20 or so accounts/filters, you’ll need to rely on the search facility as you won’t be able to find jack I’m afraid.

Next, if you’re logged into GA and looking at a particular profile, don’t open another tab and load your site, as GA decides to take over that page and throw the in-page analytics all over it. Bit annoying if you forgot about it – but luckily with a quick click you can get rid of it.

Oh, and I nearly forgot: the continued reliance on flash – yep there’s more and more flash being used each time. Glad GA looked after their own “android” followers and left us “Apple” fans out in the cold. Not sure how well the apps that can be found in the app store will work after the change – can only keep my fingers crossed!

So what do you need to do?

1. Have a good look round and get yourself familiar: if any of your other departments use GA you can easily expect to have a hundred and one questions coming through shortly! Maybe a pro-active approach would be to run a GA training session on the new interface (always a great way to show off the new features).

2. While checking out the new features, make sure you’re tracking code is up-to-date and you’ve set up the account to allow cross-domain tracking and that you’ve activated the great search tracking feature they offer. You may need to speak to your developer about the search parameter to set this up, but believe me it’s worth it – those search reports are worth more than their weight in gold for improving the visitor flow on your site.

3. If you’re using any custom reporting try and take some manual copies of how you have built them as you may well need to re-build them yourself soon unless they do get the migrate tool sorted quickly.

4. Have a look at what you’re using on your site now for social engagement: if it’s not AddThis or ShareThis have a think about changing. It’ll allow you to more easily track whether they really are being used and what is being talked about from the site to social media.

5. Set up your new dashboards as they don’t come over (as far as I can see) from the old system, and remember – you can now have multiple dashboards so no need to struggle fitting everything on the one dashboard!