Google Analytics is extremely powerful, and can produce very detailed and comprehensive reports. Often times you need to include a chart, graph or general report of the data in a customized report for your client or company. For example, I pull together (with Excel & Word) various statistics into a weekly web report, compare performance to the previous week, and send it to an entire Marketing team.
Well, Google Analytics allows you not only to obtain the data/analytics you need, but also to download them in a transmittable or processable format.
Take the Visitors Overview report for example. Simply clicking the Export button gives you four different formats in which to download the data: PDF, XML, CSV, TSV:
The PDF looks identical to the data on the screen, and the others provide the metrics in a consumable format, so that you can create your own lists, charts and graphs.
You can use the Email feature to send the report to yourself and someone else, rather than simply downloading it. While this may seem a little redundant, it becomes truly powerful when you set up schedule email reports!
Scheduled Email Reports
Click Email, then click the Schedule tab. You'll see this screen:
If the report needs to go to anyone besides yourself, put their email address in the 'Send to others:' field, separated by commas. You can customize the subject and description (body of the email), and choose which format to receive the report data in. If you're sending it to non-geeks, the PDF version is the most eye-friendly!
Next choose the frequency at which you wish to receive the reports. The email reports will include data from the previous day, week, month, or quarter, depending on which you choose.
- "Daily" reports are sent each day and report data for the previous day. (obviously)
- "Weekly" reports are sent each Monday and report data for the previous Monday through Sunday.
- "Monthly" reports are sent on the first day of each month, and report the previous month's data.
- "Quarterly" reports are sent on the first day of each quarter ( i.e. January 1, April 1, etc), and report the previous quarter's data.
One of the coolest things about this automated reporting is the ability to Include date comparison, which should provide performance against the previous reporting period. This basically means that I should be able to put together all the metrics in my weekly web report, automate the email, and I no longer have to compile it! This has just saved me an hour each and every week!
Anyhow, enjoy this awesome feature, it's one of the little things that makes Google Analytics so user-friendly!
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