Today we’re announcing some big changes in the way users can register and manage sites within Ginzametrics.
Overview
Our old system was not bad in that it let users easily add new sites to Ginzametrics, but there were many things we wanted to improve, everything from the overall usability of the workflow to exposing more functionality upfront so that users knew how to get the full value out of the Ginzametrics platform.
We had a few other goals as well.
First, we realized that we were repeating ourselves all over the place with different bits of functionality to first set up and then administer a site spread out all over the place throughout the user interface. So one of our big goals was to combine the new setup wizard and all of the site management tools into a single code base so that we could reduce bugs and maintenance overhead, and also provide users with a more consistent interface. Now, after you have set up your site, when you click the Settings tab, you will be taken to a screen that is essentially the same screen you used to set up the site in the first place.
Second, we wanted to build a cleaner API that we could also release to our customers in our upcoming version 2 of the Ginzametrics API.
By letting our customers build their integrations on the same codebase that we use to develop features, we guarantee that there are fewer points of failure and that bugs that are fixed for the app are also fixed in the API. This also lets us get even greater automated test coverage with simpler tools based on HTTP and JSON.
New Site Creation Wizard
When you click the New Site button on the Account Dashboard…
you will now get something that looks like this:
Each step on the wizard has been simplified so that there is roughly only one step per major component of the setup. This is an improvement because previously, multiple concepts were sort of mushed into one step and it wasn’t very pretty at times.
There is still a lot of work we would like to do to improve the visual design of these new features but so far, we think the layout and flow is improved. We’ll continue to work on getting it right based on user feedback.
Site Settings Tab
Similarly, now when you click on the Site Settings tab…
you should see something like this:
On the new site settings area, you can now view or make changes to the following sections of your site:
- Country (cannot be changed from the UI – email support for a request to change)
- Analytics
- Keyword Groups
- Keywords
- Competitors
- Advanced Settings
- Site Deletion
New Features
Automated Keyword Grouping
One of the new features with this release that we’re most excited about is our Automated Keyword Grouping functionality. The way it works is, when you create a new keywords group, you have the option of specifying (comma-delimited) words or phrases as match rules.
I’ll explain more how this works below the screenshot.
Say you’re a big online retailer you have a keyword group called DVDs. You may have a bunch of keywords that have the string “dvd” in them, eg. golf dvd, game of thrones dvd, etc.
With this feature, instead of manually adding all these keywords to a group, when you create your group, just specify that one of the matching strings for this group is “dvd” (no quotes) — and it will be added automatically.
Currently, this feature only works for when you add new keywords but we are going to be releasing (soon – in the next few weeks) the ability to add a new group or new group rule that will retroactively go back and group your keywords.
Other new enhancements to this feature that are coming soon: regular expression matching, grouping based on other factors (more details to follow 🙂 ).
Improved Bulk Editing with CSV Templates
We’ve had the ability to upload CSV in order to bulk load data into Ginzametrics for quite some time but the first version of this functionality turned out to be really hard for users to understand and it led to quite a few problems. We’ve taken a big step in reducing these problems by simplifying the upload interface, removing the need to specify file encoding before you upload your file, and providing upload templates that you can download ahead of time for the various type of bulk actions that you want to perform.
We’re still working some of the kinks out of this new version but based on the feedback we have received so far, it is a massive improvement. If you feel so inclined, please give it a try and let us know what you think.
Known Issues & Sending Feedback
We have quite a few known issues with this release as it represents one of the bigger changes we’ve made over the last few months. As always, if you have any problems, feel free to give us a call at (888) 469-2707 or email us at support@ginzametrics.com and we’ll get you taken care of.
Additionally, if you have feedback on how we can make this new system better for you, please don’t hesitate to let us know. Thanks, as always, for using Ginzametrics.