
Ask HN: Why is Google Analytics’ UI so confusing? - 2pointsomone
I am an engineer with a management degree (with marketing courses) from a pretty reputed university. I have had a Google Analytics account for several years now. I just finished the Analytics online course. Can somebody please explain to me why the UI of Google Analytics is so extremely confusing and not intuitive at all?
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shazow
I worked on Google Analytics until a year and a half ago, and my impression is
that the focus has increasingly been towards sophisticated power users,
especially Premium Customers[1] who pay for Google Analytics.

I suspect this creates a dangerous forcing function such that you're designing
a product for people who are already strongly committed (by paying a lot of
money) and don't really care about what it looks like (because there are
entire teams allocated to hack on it, often directly via the API).

Shameless plug: I built
[https://briefmetrics.com/](https://briefmetrics.com/), it emails you weekly
summaries of your Google Analytics so you don't have to navigate the UI. :)

Oh, also check out the official GA mobile app, it's actually a fair bit easier
to navigate than the web interface.

[1]
[https://www.google.com/analytics/premium/](https://www.google.com/analytics/premium/)

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jamez1
It is probably because you're not used to the concept of a data warehouse, and
when you are given full control over one it might be beyond your current
skill-set.

Engineering/Management don't really do much to teach you how to
structure/query data, so perhaps that's why.

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2pointsomone
Seriously? The point of making that note was to communicate that I am
reasonably intellectual. Analytics is made for normal people. Its like telling
someone that the reason they don't understand Facebook is because they are not
anthropologists or sociologists.

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grey-area
Probably because it has grown organically - it may never have been designed at
all, but just had details tweaked and features added over the years until it
reached its current state. I agree it is very confusing because there are so
many features, though I like the real time section and audience overview,
which seem pretty clear.

What in particular would you change though? Which metrics do you want to see
at a glance which are buried, which things would you like to see on an overall
dashboard? It's easy to say something is confusing, but far harder to come up
with specific recommendations in order to make it better. This is an area
which interests me so I'm genuinely interested in your response.

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2pointsomone
Hey thanks! Yeah I don't know. I was considering doing a redesign and putting
it in a blogpost - but thinking through this is painful.

I guess I just want to know about how much traffic I am getting everyday,
where its coming from, what users are doing when they arrive on the site, and
when they leave. I wish I had better ways to explain that.

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Avalaxy
You know you can make custom dashboards right? Maybe that will help you out
with what you want.

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2pointsomone
I have spent all day trying to do that. It seems like I need a PhD in data
science to understand the complex UI around all of it.

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jacquesm
Because GA is huge. It's very hard to take something with that much
functionality and to package it so that a new user gets a friendly experience
and a power user can get out of it what they want. See also: every 3D CAD
program, animation software, most IDE's and so on.

~~~
2pointsomone
Good point. But have you used Adobe's creativity products? They are massive,
but still extremely usable. GA has somehow only paid attention to UI and
forgotten all UX issues.

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jacquesm
No, I haven't, but my eldest son, who is a designer swears by them.

~~~
2pointsomone
They are a piece of beauty when it comes to information design. GA doesn't
have a quarter amount of complexity compared to something like Photoshop.

~~~
jamez1
If it's not even a quarter as complex as Photoshop, how come it is so hard for
you to use?

Comparing a data warehouse tool to a picture editor doesn't lead to any useful
insights. The use cases are completely different and the complexities are
different animals.

