Hot Koehl

This is the kind of “usability fail” that drives me nuts, especially from a company of Google’s caliber. When you add a new site to Google Analytics, they present you with the Javascript code block you need during the setup process. But what if you need to look up that code block again? What if Google updates the Analytics code block (they just did it in Dec 2008)? Naturally you go back to the Analytics site to get the code…

Where’s the code block at? Anyone else stumped? Keep in mind that I limited this puzzle to just a single page; I scoured the whole site before finding the link on this page. As it turns out, the code block is hiding in the Check Status link in the top right corner of the main column.

It’s not part of any of the standardized navigation — the header, the breadcrumbs, the sidebar — and the link text is not at all indicative of what the resulting page contains. Speaking of which, the page that actually houses the code is even more incriminating.

The “status” information appears at least in part on the previous page, so the overt purpose of this page is pretty worthless. To make matters worse, the breadcrumb actually says “Tracking Code.” So someone got the right idea when they put this page together, but didn’t follow through when hooking it up to the rest of the site navigation.

Everyone (and so every company) makes mistakes. However Analytics is an offshoot of the Google AdWords service, which is their bread and butter. This kind of oversight on a flagship product is simply sloppy.

Make sure that you spend all the necessary time on the key “touch points” of your site/service to ensure they are operating at their maximum.