For a company whose main search interface remains resolutely unencumbered by visual fripperies, Google sure like to mess around with the look and feel of their other apps. Perhaps they’ve just got a shedload of guys somewhere with nothing better to do!
More likely that they themselves know that additional polish on the apps takes the computer that bit closer to the kind of interfaces we’ve come to know and love on the desktop (i.e. further warning shots across the bows of Microsoft). This morning I finally got my hands on the new look AdWords “Beta” interface and my first impression is that it is a sweet looking piece of kit. The visual fit and finish of the interface is certainly far more in keeping with the standards set by Analytics – with graphs and similar visual aids telling you the high level story, which is often what you’re looking for when reporting back to clients who don’t have time to wade through the detail.
I’ve only been looking at it for an hour or so, so far and it’s too early to tell exactly how usable the interface is in comparison to the old. One thing I have noticed is that some tasks are now handled inline through Ajax – which is fine by me. With campaigns that need a lot of active management, clicking through various levels to changes budgets and statuses had gotten pretty laborious under the old style interface so this at least looks like a welcome improvement.
In terms of detail and functionality, I haven’t come across anything I can see that is a clear change: this is all cosmetics. And you know what? That’s fine with me. Barring a few features I’d like to see added, AdWords is pretty rich in function but the old interface made a lot of that very difficult to access. Hopefully, under this surface gloss – impressive in itself – everything will get a little bit easier to work with.
The graphs I think are so far the coolest tool – but I can’t see the export feature that exists in Analytics, for example which would be very useful for reporting purposes to demonstrate trends without messing around with Excel graphs.
I like the circles on your diagrams!!
I’ve tried out the new interface and I like the slick ajaxiness that saves clicking through stuff. Having said that I got an error message every few minutes and it’d only work again by going back to the campaign overview screen so I went back to the old version for now
You know me – I’m not going to let little details like “it doesn’t work” get in the way of me using it (Chrome user since day 1, baby!) I do get perturbed when you want to edit a particular keyword – I think it’s just the URL – and it warns you that it will be moved to ‘edited/deleted’. I understand why but it put the willies up me.
I’m glad you like the circles – it’s part of a series of usability test. Next time… triangles!