Who has switched back to old interface?

[Discovery]

I've been using the new beta interface for the past week.
It has it's positives and negatives for sure. The one thing that has held me back is that it is piss ass slow.

Today I needed to jump in and make a few quick changes, for whatever reason I didnt fire up AE and logged in instead.
The wait between each screenload and for data to appear is painful. Same issue that Yahoo has.

Anyhow, I jumped back to the old interface and felt a warm sense of calm. made the quick changes in a few graceful strokes and clicks... ahhhh. Now I think I'm pretty much decided, I will likely never use the web interface once it has been changed and opt for AE as my primary tool.

Whats your take thus far?

[AussieWebmaster]

yeah am not feeling the new interface - guess it will take a littled while before it becomes comfortable

[Deltron Zero]

I poked around for about 5 minutes and I couldn't find a search tool, so I switched back. Did I overlook it or does the new interface not have it? If there is no way to search my campaigns I definitely won't ever be using it.

[kiowajackson]

I was skeptical for the first hour or so, but now I feel the new interface is a huge leap from the old interface. There are several time saving things you could previously only do from AE (like seeing all ads or keywords for an entire campaign or the account) + the default graphs give you an immediate visualization of the day-to-day performance of the adgroup, whereas AE only gives you a summary for a time period (masking spikes) and provides no graph for the stats. The sidebar allows you to click from campaign to campaign directly, without having to navigate through the navigation tree/open campaigns in multiple tabs.

I used to almost exclusively use AE and almost never log in, but now with the new interface I find several information gathering tasks much faster/completer from the new interface. So far I'm using AE and the actual account interface about 50-50. I haven't experienced any slow load times, so for me it's a huge improvement.

[AussieWebmaster]

seems another giant has made changes the users don't like

[AdWordsRep]

Just a quick note that I'll happily pass feedback about the updated UI from this thread along to the right folks here at Google - whether it is positive, negative or neutral.

Regards,

AWA

[kiowajackson]

Originally Posted by AdWordsRep

Just a quick note that I'll happily pass feedback about the updated UI from this thread along to the right folks here at Google - whether it is positive, negative or neutral.

Regards,

AWA

Here's a small thing: the second metric for the graph keeps on disappearing, and I have to keep clicking add a second metric over and over again to see it (sometimes I have to deselect it and select it again, sometimes it's been completeley reset). It would be nice if I could set a default consistent for the entire account (I'm assuming this was the intention but there's a small bug?).

And speaking of defaults, it would be nice if I could set a default setting for ad rotation & delivery method (currently I don't know of another way than going to each campaign and changing them after I've created them).

[Discovery]

It's early, so allow me to make an odd analogy.

A guy spends 3 years and 5 grand on Golf lessons learning all the finer nuances of the swing, he has all the best clubs with the latest technology - he stands up to the par 3 and knocks it within 6 feet.

Larry plays once a year, he has his neighbors 15 year old clubs, a generic ball and no training. With a swing that looks like a seizure he bounces the ball to within 5 feet of the cup.


Sometimes I think Google forgets less is more.

[roligan]

How do I switch to the new interface?

[Show Me Cables]

No, I'm loving the new interface. The biggest complaint I hear is that it's slow... I don't get that. I use it in Chrome with the Application Shortcut feature, so there's no address bar or anything. I've never had any speed issues, but I can only speak for myself, of course.

Deltron, yes, I had the same reaction as you. They don't have a search tool per se, but they have improved it with the "Filter and Views" Tool. The tool changes for whatever category you are in, so if you wanted to search for a specific keyword, you would need to click on the keywords tab and then filter the keywords by text.

It's actually much more powerful and useful.

My only problem is that I have to sometimes scroll horizontally, but I should probably just request a widescreen monitor here at work.

[AussieWebmaster]

It's always good to have someone who finds it a good interface.... but you are a trendsetter doing it with Chrome

[Show Me Cables]

I detect sarcasm. I probably deserve it.

But to be clear, I was talking the Application Shortcut Feature of Chrome, which I think is terrific:
http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=95710


Maybe that's obvious to everyone.

[Mel66]

It has its good and bad aspects.

Good:
* In-line editing of bids, budgets, etc. No waiting for new pages to load. Love this.
* The graphs - very helpful.
* Can edit many settings in-line such as pause, resume, etc.

Bad:
* Slow performance. I agree with Discovery on this.
* See kiowajackson's comments on defaults. This is a HUGE issue. I manage many clients via MCC and the date range in the old interface is sticky between clients. In the new one it is not. So now I have to adjust the date range over and over again. Huge PITA when you have 20+ clients....
* As kiowajackson said it would be very nice to be able to set defaults for ad rotation. I do not use Google's lovely "optimize" feature so I have to change this manually on every %$&%*$()%& campaign.
* The "recommended daily budget" feature is nowhere to be found. I know some advertisers don't care about this but for me it is an absolute necessity to have this info. I can't imagine Google wouldn't want to let us know we could be spending more money with them....

[AdWordsRep]

Many thanks for the comments - a very interesting mix of opinions, which I'll pass along later this evening, in an Advertiser Feedback Report that I send out each week.

AWA

[KSew]

I have a 17" CRT monitor, and I need to scroll it left and right to see the full screen. Why cant I see the whole picture at one place?

Yes, it is slow.

Also its NOT as user friendly as the older version.

My dad can use the older one, but with the new one he keeps asking for help.

AWA can you please tell what inspired Google this new interface? Change just to change (keep the software guys busy bcos they have no other work), or is it really better than the old?

[kg84]

One thing I do not like, is that you cannot use the filters, when looking at ads, to display only ads that are active and not paused or deleted. It seems it allows you to filter the deleted, but not the paused.
The loading times can be a pain too.

[kg84]

SEW forums have become pretty weak. There is barely any participation anymore. There is only a couple posts a week...whats up with that?

[AussieWebmaster]

seems people too busy - but if you want to start some conversations maybe it will get more people invloved

[afterhours]

I find myself switching back and forth. There are some aspects of the new interface that are helpful (e.g. graphing), but also little things that are either missing or tedious to reach. Also the new interface overall is just too busy.

[abbottsys]

I'm back on the old interface. The new one has shades of Yahoo Panorama if anyone remembers when that clunker came out. Why did Google have to update the interface? It must have been a huge engineering job. The old one is sleek, stripped down and relaxing! Less is more.