Google released a new version of its web stats application and it is beautiful. The interface is significantly revised and, thanks to Jeff Veen, formerly of Adapative Path and now a Google lead designer, and his team, usable, beautiful, and highly informative. The application is free to users and a must-have for non-profit web sites. Avinash Kaushik, one of our favorite bloggers on all things web stats, has a great post on his Occam's Razor blog that walks you through the major improvements.

We here love the email notification, the great data presentation on new and returning visitors, the keyword graphs that help us use our Google ad words better, and the terrific site overlay that lets you see how your users are navigating through your site, where they are leaving and where they are going.

What we love most, though, is what Avinash describes so well (and which Holly pointed out long ago): If the dress ain't pretty... He writes: As you’ll use the tool you’ll see more and more examples of effective communication of data via a very well thought out UI that is perhaps the best one today amongst all web analytics tools.People underestimate the value of being pretty. Our world of web analytics is already too complex and data is hard to parse and insights harder still to get. Effective presentation of data (ok pretty!) is greatly accretive to helping understand trends and insights and significantly increase ease of use both for a lay person and the super analyst."

And that is what makes Google so useful for the nonprofit sector where there is a wide range of people with varying experience using tech. For more information, go to the Google Analytics site (see also Jeff Veen's flash demonstration) and add Google Analytics to your site to try it out.