Google Analytics excels at collecting an incredible amount of information about how visitors interact with the web and mobile properties of its users. This data provides marketers and analysts who know what they’re looking for with with an incredibly powerful platform to understand what’s working and what’s not. To those who aren’t sure what they’re looking for though, all of this information can be overwhelming and make it easy to take no action at all.
SiteApps enables businesses to get instantaneous, free recommendations on how to optimize their website based on their Google Analytics data. SiteApps’ technology runs hundreds of automated analyses on its customers’ web data to identify opportunities for improvement. Based on these tailored recommendations, SiteApps then enables businesses to install apps from their marketplace to help solve these problems.
One of SiteApps’ customers is a family-owned home furnishings designer that was having difficulty maintaining their eCommerce presence while still focusing on the day-to-day operations of their brick and mortar retail store. Within minutes of signing up for SiteApps, they were able to identify dozens of opportunities for site optimization. By installing the apps that were recommended to them, they were able to create a compelling web presence that increased their conversion rate by 108% and led to 65% more time spent on site by its visitors. This led to a substantial increase in revenue for the business simply by unlocking the power of their web analytics data. “Our business is completely based on data. It’s incredibly important to us that customers know - or learn - just how valuable their data is,” says Phillip Klien, co-founder of SiteApps. “We consider Google Analytics the foundation for our platform and use the results to help customers make the most of the data their website produces.” SiteApps is free to try and takes a matter of minutes to set-up. Give it a try today to see what you can uncover from your web analytics. Posted by the Google Analytics team
Businesses collect and rely on data that exists in silos across the web - from site analytics to inventory numbers, social media to sales data, there’s more important data available today than most are able to aggregate and analyze themselves.
SumAll is a connected data platform that enables business operators from companies of all sizes to visualize their mission-critical data through one centralized location. Users of SumAll can extract insights across datasets by combining and analyzing the metrics that matter most to them. “Put simply, our vision is to democratize information by making it beautiful, affordable and accessible to all. In doing so, the visibility and insights that SumAll brings enables business operators to turn data into dollars,” says Catherine Gluckstein, President of SumAll.
One of SumAll’s customers was having a very difficult time making sense of his eCommerce, Google Analytics and social media data. He knew there was a story to be told about how each was influencing the other, but being a small business owner, he lacked the resources to dive too far into them himself. He decided to give SumAll a try and within a few minutes and even fewer clicks, was able to integrate all of his key data and view it in one uniform dashboard without having to work with his developers.
For the first time, he was able to see what was happening across his business and understand the relationship between his social media posts, web traffic and transactions. This made him more comfortable continuing to invest his limited resources in social media because, for the first time, he could see that it was working.
SumAll integrates with all major components of the eCommerce ecosystem including payment processors, social platforms, shopping carts, online marketplaces and, of course, Google Analytics. “It only took us about 6 weeks to complete our integration with Google Analytics, from concept to go live,” according to Catherine. “After our customer completes the authentication and authorization process, we ingest their data into SumAll and normalize it to make it available to all SumAll applications across web, mobile and email.”
SumAll is free to try and is incredibly intuitive and straightforward to set-up. Sign-Up today to break down the silos around your data and empower your business’ data-driven decisions today.
John is a Developer Program Manager working to build the ecosystem around the Google Analytics APIs. In his spare time he likes to explore San Francisco and cheer loudly during UCLA games.
The following is a guest post from Ellie Fields. Ellie is the Director of Product Marketing at Tableau Software, responsible for new product launch, industry solutions and Tableau's community. Her data geek credentials come from time served in technology and finance companies. She works with people from all over the world who are trying to tell stories with data, from journalists to hospitals to high tech companies.
Over at Tableau Software we’re big Google Analytics users. That’s why we got so excited for Tableau’s new Google Analytics connector, which uses the GA API to pull data right into Tableau.
If you don’t know Tableau, consider checking it out today. It’s a useful, new way of working with data: you simply drag & drop to create sophisticated analyses. Anyone can create powerful dashboards without needing to know programming or be a specialist. Tableau was spun out of Stanford about 8 years ago, and it’s the technology developed there—a visual interface into data—that makes Tableau different.
So what can you do with GA data and Tableau? Well, for one thing you can connect directly to GA to get your data. You can create custom dashboards. And you can extend GA data with new calculations. Here’s a video of how we used the Tableau GA connector along with some Excel data to understand our own website better:
You might have noticed one special feature in there: the ability to blend Google Analytics data with other data, like data in Excel or a database. This opens up a whole new world of insight. Your website is a great asset, and of course it doesn’t work alone. Mashing up web data with offline data, demographics and more tells you more about what’s working and what’s not.
This is just a preview of the Google Analytics connector. It’ll be in beta very soon. If you’re a customer you can join the v8 beta when it comes out. If you’re not yet using Tableau, try it out (for free).
Posted by Ellie Fields, Director of Product Marketing at Tableau Software
One of the most complex challenges that marketers face is managing the effective segmentation of their user base. Each of their target audiences has a different set of preferences and the process of creating campaigns based on intuition just isn't effective. UserReport is an on-site survey tool that integrates with Google Analytics and tackles this problem head-on. The product providing the ability to use demographic information and traditional research data to optimize acquisition, content and conversions when working with websites. UserReport helps its users collect information about their website’s visitors with a free online survey tool that measures usability and key demographics of the site’s users. The product integrates harmoniously with Google Analytics to turn the survey data they collect into actionable insights by merging it with the behavioral data already stored in Google Analytics.
SAXO.com is one of the largest online book stores in Denmark and utilizes UserReport to identify their highest value demographic segments, create more targeted advertising material and to better understand which online advertising networks they should use for targeting specific groups of customers. By using UserReport, SAXO.com was able to uncover some surprising insights about their customers, including:
Men and women have about the same conversion rate, but the average basket size for women is almost $20 higher than it is for men. This made SAXO.com feel more comfortable in supporting a higher CPM/CPC to advertise to niche female audiences.
SAXO.com’s older book buyers have a higher conversion rate than their younger counterparts but the younger buyers’ average basket size is about $40 more than the older users’. A closer investigation revealed that most of these young customers were students purchasing books for classes. This led SAXO.com to focus on targeting the university student market to bring more young buyers into the mix.
The findings made by SAXO.com through integrating their Google Analytics data with their UserReport survey data has enabled them to create online campaigns focused on bundling unique, focused products and target them at the right customers on the right channels to drive conversions. UserReport is free to use and takes minutes to set up. Give it a try to see what you can uncover about your own online audience!
John is a Developer Program Manager working to build the ecosystem around the Google Analytics APIs. In his spare time he likes to explore San Francisco and cheer loudly during UCLA games.
Guest author Ashraf Chohan works at the Government Digital Service (GDS), part of the UK Cabinet Office. Originally posted on the Google Apps Developer Blog by Arun Nagarajan.
Recently, when we were preparing the launch of GOV.UK, my team was tasked with creating a series of high-level metrics reports which could be quickly compiled and presented to managers without technical or analytical backgrounds. These reports would be sent daily to ministers and senior civil servants of several government departments, with the data customised for each department.
We decided to use Adobe InDesign to manage the visual appearance of the reports. InDesign’s data-merge functionality, which can automatically import external data into the layout, made it easy to create custom departmental reports. The challenge was to automate the data collection using the Google Analytics API, then organize the data in an appropriate format for InDesign’s importer.
In a previous post on this blog, Nick Mihailovski introduced a tool which allows automation of Google Analytics Reporting using Google Apps Script. This seemed an ideal solution because the team only had basic developer knowledge, much of the data we needed was not accessible from the Google Analytics UI, and some of the data required specific formatting prior to being exported.
We started by building the core reports in a Google spreadsheet that pulls in all of the required raw data. Because we wanted to create daily reports, the start and end dates for our queries referenced a cell which defaulted to yesterday’s date [=(TODAY())-1].
These queries were dynamically fed into the Google Analytics API through Apps Script:
// All variables read from each of the “query” cells var optArgs ={ 'dimensions': dimensions, 'sort': sort 'segment': segment 'filters': filters, 'start-index':'1', 'max-results':'250' };
// Make a request to the API. var results =Analytics.Data.Ga.get( tableId,// Table id (format ga:xxxxxx). startDate,// Start-date (format yyyy-MM-dd). endDate,// End-date (format yyyy-MM-dd). endDate,// Comma seperated list of metrics. optArgs);
Next, we created additional worksheets that referenced the raw data so that we could apply the first stage of formatting. This is where storing the data in a spreadsheet really helps, as data formatting is not really possible in the Google Analytics UI.
For example, the final report had a 47-character limit for page titles, so we restricted the cells in the spreadsheet to 44 characters and automatically truncated long URLs by appending “...”.
Once the initial formatting was complete, we used formulas to copy the data into a summary sheet specially laid out so it could be exported as a CSV file that merges seamlessly into InDesign.
Below is an example of how a report looks on publication. Nearly everything on the page was extracted from the API tool, including the department name and the day number. Because most of the data was automated, it required minimal effort on our part to assemble these reports each morning.
We discovered that an added bonus of pulling data into a Google spreadsheet was that it also allowed us to publish the data to a Google site. This helped us display data to stakeholders without adding lots of users to our Google Analytics account.
The tools let us present Google Analytics data in deeper, more creative ways. That’s really important as we share information with more and more non-technical people, whether they’re inside GDS or beyond.
In the next two weeks members of the Google Analytics team will be hosting Google Developers Live (GDL) live streams about getting started with Cost Data Upload and the story behind the new Mobile SDKs. Be sure to mark your calendars, share your questions and join us as we dive deep into the world of analytics.
To whet your appetite, check out a 100-second recap of our last GDL event starring Nick Mihailovski and Ikai Lan discussing the Apps Script + Google Analytics Integration:
Off the Charts: Getting Cost Data into Google Analytics (GDL)
With Analytics’ new Cost Data Upload feature, users can measure and analyze non-Google cost data to calculate paid campaign effectiveness. Developers are able to build solutions to upload exported cost data into Analytics so marketers can have a unified view of their campaign spend - all within the Google Analytics interface. Join Google Analytics’ Developer Advocate Pete Frisella to dive into the implementation of this new feature through the robust Analytics APIs. Date: Thursday, November 29 at 1:00pm PST How to Watch:Visit the Google Developers Live page at the above time or add this event to your calendar. Get Involved:Ask questions to your heart’s content about Cost Data Upload for a chance to have them answered live.
Behind the Code: The Analytics Mobile SDK (GDL)
The new Google Analytics Mobile SDK empowers Android and iOS developers to effectively collect user engagement data from their applications to measure active user counts, user geography, new feature adoption and many other useful metrics. Join Analytics Developer Program Engineer Andrew Wales and Analytics Software Engineer Jim Cotugno for an unprecedented look behind the code at the goals, design, and architecture of the new SDK to learn more about what it takes to build world-class technology. Date: Thursday, December 6 at 2:00pm PST How to Watch:Visit the Google Developers Live page at the above time or add this event to your calendar. Get Involved:Ask your burning questions about the Analytics Mobile SDK for a chance to have them answered live.
The following is a guest post contributed by Caleb Whitmore, founder of Analytics Pros and the BEST Practices Conference, Google Analytics enthusiast, and aspiring mountaineer.
The Analytics Pros team hosted the first-ever GAUGE Hack Night & Google Analytics Application Showcase at the Boston 2012 GAUGE conference. The event consisted of a networking reception and application showcase where developers of Google Analytics integrated products had the chance to pitch their creation to a panel of industry leaders, Googlers, and the audience in 5 minutes or less. Judges included Justin Cutroni from Google, Caleb Whitmore from Analytics Pros, and a lucky audience member. Applications were evaluated by the judges based on level of Google Analytics depth and complexity, potential for business value and level of innovation and creativity. This year’s winners were:
Narrative Science demonstrated a revolutionary new approach to automated reporting with a product called Quill™ for Google Analytics. Quill analyzes Website data and automatically generates a weekly summary of trends, highlights and lowlights in plain English. Rather than provide a series of tables and graphs, users receive a succinct summary similar to one written by a professional analyst. Quill reviews and interprets a year's worth of Google Analytics data to deliver insight in an easy-to-understand, mobile-friendly format. Instead of having to traverse spreadsheets to derive insights from your data, Narrative Science pulls out the most important trends and delivers them in a way that they’re ready to digest. The product is currently in private beta; interested users can request an invite.
A screenshot of an executive summary generated by Narrative Science’s Quill
Judges’ Choice: Demandbase
Demandbase is the first real-time targeting and personalization platform for B2B that helps you segment your Analytics based on the account details of your customers. Their solution for Google Analytics puts powerful B2B Analytics into marketers’ hands. Demandbase enables users to understand how to better engage your customers based on how they interact with your online content. To get this Demandbase data into Google Analytics, Demandbase provides its customers with an easy to use connector. Users select the Demandbase attributes they want populated in their custom variables and with a choice of asynchronous tracking with Pageviews or with a Custom Non-Interaction event, the connector provides a custom tag that can replace or be placed alongside their existing GATC (depending on what method is selected).
A screenshot of Demandbase’s connector interface and tracking script generator
Social Media Favorite: CampaignAlyzer
CampaignAlyzer is a web-based solution that acts as a central repository platform where organizations can store their marketing campaign values in one database. Marketing agencies and digital marketers across an organization now have the ability to collaborate in tagging various online and offline campaigns, and ensure consistency in their campaign tagging. The application streamlines campaign tagging into a process that is efficient, timely, accurate, adaptive, value-added and business critical. With CampaignAlyzer analysts wouldn’t need to worry about tags and where they should go. Instead they’ll now have more time to do what they should have been doing in the first place; data analysis and measuring the success of their marketing campaigns.
A view of the CampaignAlyzer Campaign Management dashboard
Explore the Analytics Ecosystem
Narrative Science, Demandbase and CampaignAlyzer represent some of the new and innovative approaches that companies are using to rethink many of the problems facing the Analytics industry. If you’re interested in exploring more ways to make the most of Google Analytics, check out the Google Analytics App Gallery to turbocharge your collection, measurement and analysis. Are you a developer building on the Analytics platform? Let us know what you’re working on! Posted by John Milinovich, Google Analytics API Team
Google Analytics Core Reporting APIs enable a powerful and flexible way to analyze, report on, and ultimately optimize such things as web and mobile experiences, conversions, and sales.
Today we’re adding over 40 new metrics and dimensions that can be queried through the Core Reporting API. This enables developers to create reports that are similar to what is available in the Google Analytics web interface for important areas such as social and mobile. See a full list of additions on the Core Reporting API changelog.
Here’s a rundown of what’s new and a few helpful questions the data can answer.
Social Data Now you can get data for both on-site interactions with social buttons as well as off-site social data from social data hub partner networks.
Page Path Rollups Create your own drill down reports with these new dimensions that allow you to roll-up metrics to hierarchical levels of your property.
This article is part of our Developer Spotlight Series that promotes new tools and applications built using the Google Analytics Developer platform. To see other tools, check out our App Gallery. Interested in having us showcase your story? Let us know what you’re working on!
Eduardo Scoz is a software architect and self-proclaimed, “analytics addict.” In early 2010, he grew frustrated with his daily routine of checking in on his web analytics from several sites and personal blogs. Very quickly he found himself spending an overwhelming amount of time monitoring his key metrics from across his own content kingdom: he yearned for a way to keep an eye on his KPI’s without having it feel like a full-time job. Eduardo was determined to find an iPhone application that gave him a high-level view of all of his sites in way that was easy to digest. After a few days of searching he realized that the only way for him to get exactly what he wanted was to build it himself. He had never built an iPhone application but his “learn by doing” mentality prevailed: after a few weeks of prototyping, he had come up with something he was proud of. He showed it to a few friends and gauging their reaction, he realized he might be onto something. He incorporated their feedback, finished building it out and decided to release it publicly. In February 2010, Quicklytics was born. Quicklytics allows users to rapidly check the status of multiple websites in a matter of seconds and visually understand how their site is performing for both current and historical timeframes. It has full support for both iPhone and iPad as well as custom filtering that allows for quick deep dives into areas of interest. While its primary views focus on top-level metrics, Quicklytics also provides detailed reports with most of the data also available through Google Analytics.
“All apps were about either showing as much data as possible, or focusing on less-useful stuff, like browsers and screen sizes, which are only really necessary when you’re doing deep analysis, not when ‘checking the weather’,” says Eduardo. As soon as Quicklytics hit the App Store, it spread like wildfire. In the 2 ½ years since it was released, Quicklytics has received over 40,000 downloads - most of which were paid. This has translated into a significant source of side revenue for Eduardo’s business that has allowed him to continue building new features for Quicklytics while looking for new projects to learn from. Now, Eduardo finds great joy in using Quicklytics to measure the mobile app analytics on - you guessed it - Quicklytics. Quicklytics leverages the Analytics Core Reporting APIs Objective-C library and OAuth 2.0 for user authentication. Although this was Eduardo’s first experience with the Analytics APIs and Objective-C, he was able to take full advantage of the Developer Forums for support: “In the few cases I found issues with the tool, Google developers were actually very helpful and fixed some issues from their side. It was a great experience.” Armed with a clear user problem and a willingness to learn, Eduardo was able to turn one of his biggest pain points into a viable side business and a solution that is enjoyed by many. According to Eduardo, “It’s great to know that a lot of people find it as useful as I do.” To learn more about Quicklytics, check out his App Store listing. Posted by John Milinovich, Google Analytics API team
Many people have been asking for a simple way to put Google Analytics data into a Google Spreadsheet. Once the data is inside a Google Spreadsheet, users can easily manipulate Google Analytics data, create new visualizations, and build internal dashboards.
So today we released a new integration that dramatically reduces the work required to put Google Analytics data into any Apps Script supported product, such as Google Docs, Sites, or Spreadsheets.
Here’s an example of Google Analytics data accessed through Apps Script and displayed in a Google Spreadsheet.
Custom API Dashboards - No Code Required
We know that a popular use case of this integration will be to create dashboards that automatically update. To make this easy to do, we’ve added a script to the Spreadsheets script gallery that handles all this work - no code required. The script is called Google Analytics Report Automation (Magic).
This script is a great template for starting your own project, and we’ve had many internal Google teams save hours of time using this tool. Here’s a video demoing how to build a dashboard using this script:
You can find this script by opening or creating a Google Spreadsheet, clicking Tools -> Script Gallery and searching for “analytics magic”.
Writing Your Own Script
Of course many developers will want to write their own code. With the new Analytics – Apps Script integration, you can request the total visitors, visits, and pageviews over time and put this data into a spreadsheet with just the following code:
// Get Data. var results = Analytics.Data.Ga.get( tableId, startDate, endDate, 'ga:visitors,ga:visits,ga:pageviews', {‘dimensions’: ‘ga:date’});
// Output to spreadsheet. var sheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet().insertSheet(); sheet.getRange(2, 1, results.getRows().length, headerNames.length) .setValues(results.getRows());
Are you ready to start building solutions using Google Analytics and Google Apps Script?
We’d love to hear new ways you use this integration to help manipulate, visualize and present data to solve business problems. To encourage you to try out this integration, we are giving out Google Analytics developer t-shirts to the first 15 developers to build a solution using both APIs.
To be eligible, you must publish your solution to either the Chrome Web Store or the Spreadsheets Script Gallery and include a description of a business problem the script solves. We’ll then collect these scripts and highlight the solutions in an upcoming blog post. After you publish your script, fill out this form to share what you’ve built.
We’re looking forward to seeing what you can do with this integration.
