After pushing several updates to its analytics in the past year, including the integration of Facebook Insights, the new Social Analytics includes a completely new interface and the ability to create custom reports that include everything from link click-throughs, to Twitter follower growth, to the demographics behind the Facebook Likes.
The release marks an important milestone for the million-user platform, whose analytics were often its weak spot and a frustration for its more advanced users. The dashboard has a user base that ranges from everyday social media users to businesses, including Mashable.
Deeper Social Measurement
Though HootSuite provided some of these stats before, it didn't enable you to create a report within the dashboard itself. This update includes newly added metrics such as measuring your Twitter follower growth, tracking mentions on Twitter and the deeper Facebook Insights. The Google Analytics measurement modules, for example, enable you to see the Twitter-to-site conversion, that is, being able to track how many users are coming to your site based on the links you are sharing from a specific Twitter account.
Hootsutie also improved the dashboard with changes to the interface. The menu on the old dashboard was accessed through a blinking owl (based on its mascot), but for many users it was difficult to know that the blinking owl was actually the dashboard menu. The new interface includes a new menu overlay with buttons for easy access to the analytics, settings and more.
Report Builder
One of the notable features of the new Social Analytics is the ability to customize and create reports. Using the dashboard's Report Builder, you can select from more than 30 measurement modules that include metrics for your Twitter profile, aggregated Ow.ly click stats, Facebook Insights and Google Analytics. The builder also enables you to create a unique look to the report by adding a personalized header and logo.
Users can also create a quick report based on existing templates like a click summary, Facebook Insights or Google Analytics only. It also appears that the analytics have been improved in terms of performance. Because the dashboard is pulling a lot of the stats from other analytics providers, it often would slow the load time. However, the new analytics seem to be loading the stats more quickly.
What's Missing
For the users who favor other custom shortener providers such as bit.ly, the new analytics platform doesn't provide an integrated API solution. Users are stuck with the only option, using Hootsuite's own Ow.ly shortener, which for its Pro account users does include the ability to create a custom shortener.