We use Google Analytics quite a bit here at Fuzzy Math, and most of our clients do, too. It’s always a question we ask on every introduction to a new project, whether it’s for the company’s website, intranet, or admin tool. Properly configured, Google Analytics can provide a rich quantitative portrait of your users, like a paint by number picture when you first take it out of the package. Qualitative data from participatory design wokshops or direct observation in their environment colors your picture with a richer perspective, but that’s a topic for another time.
Yesterday, Google announced a significant improvement for speed and accuracy using their code: they re-vamped the Javascript calls made by each page to be complete asynchronous. Steve Souders of High Performance Web Sites fame has an awesome breakdown on what async means for you, and for more complex usages of Analytics, there’s a handy migration guide with examples those googlers created.
Heck, I think they just sped up the whole darned Internet!