smackfoo.com | I find your lack of faith disturbing.

After running Google Analytics for a month or so now, some interesting trends have emerged.

Now, before I begin, it should be noted that I don’t particularly use Google’s Analytics engine to help find the advertising ’sweet spot’ - rather it’s a tool for me to identify the content and layout that works best for you, the humble reader. Ok, perhaps there is some information gleaned regarding how advertising is vying against actual content for attention, however it’s really not the focal point.

A few things stand out however - particularly of interest to me is where folks are clicking and where there are “blind spots”.

For example, the large navigation tabs present at the top of the page, really do appear to be effective. This really isn’t much of a surprise - however it is useful to know they do genuinely work and do account for a sizeable amount of navigational use.

There are some surprises however - apparently a good deal of you either have a passing interest in web hosting, or are looking for web hosting, going by the love shown to (mt) media temple over the last few days.

The data gets a little more interesting as we delve into the reporting of “what’s joe or jill web-surfer using?”. For example, while it’s not exactly a surprise that firefox has really become quite the browser about town, it’s the actual percentage of you using it, that’s impressive.

Continuing on from the browser-of-the-week award, the screen resolutions in use does back up the concept of wider designs, for example over 60% of you have a screen resolution over 1024px x 768px.

While Google Analytics can tell me so much more - it’s this sort of granularity that really aids in finding the “right mix”. I’m quite certain a lot of data that has been captured will help form guidelines for the eventual finished design.. something that should make visiting all the more pleasant.