Once you have built a mobile website, it’s vitally important to keep track of how its being used, how many people are visiting, etc. This is the field of mobile analytics.

One of the most popular analytics packages for the web is Google Analytics, and now Google has announced a series of upgrades so that it works on mobile sites as well.

Mobile Site Tracking

One of the major enhancements was improved tracking of mobile sites.

Previously, in order for Google Analytics to track a mobile device, it was necessary for the device to support java script. However many mobile phones, particularly lower end devices, don’t support javascript, which meant that the site measurements were not that complete.

Now, publishers can add some simple lines of code to their site which will allow even non-java script capbable phones to be tracked accurately.

Mobile Apps Usage

In addition, Google has provided the capability to track usage of mobile apps. Publishers can now monitor how users interact with either iPhone or Android apps, just as they do on a website.

And, for Android apps, the tracking can even start earlier, back with the original advertisement that attracted the user. As stated in the Google blog, “usage can be tied back to ad campaigns: from ad to marketplace to download to engagement.”

Analytics Intelligence

Another very interesting part of the announcement, which applies across both mobile and online websites, is Analytics Intelligence. As explained by Dai Pham of the Google Analytics Team, “We’re launching the initial phase of an algorithmic driven Intelligence engine to Google Analytics. Analytics Intelligence will provide automatic alerts of significant changes in the data patterns of your site metrics and dimensions over daily, weekly and monthly periods.”

“For instance, Intelligence could call out a 300% surge in visits from YouTube referrals last Tuesday or let you know bounce rates of visitors from Virginia dropped by 70% two weeks ago.”

The idea is that a publisher will need to spend less time simply analyzing figures to identify pattern changes, and will therefore have more time to think about the underlying causes and subsequent actions.

For more information about mobile analytics, read this MobiAD article and download the white paper:

Mobile Analytics – Understanding What You Need To Know