Stay On Top of Your Web Analytics – Use Scheduled Reports

Many of us, regardless of how disciplined we are, fail to monitor our website’s progress on a regular basis or we think about it too much. Either way, to stay on top of website traffic, scheduling a web analytics report to show up on your desk every week or every month is a good way to solve this problem.

However, being more efficient is not all you can accomplish. Reports can be customized and you can create more than one report. Perhaps a weekly report to help you stay current on a few vital metrics or measures and a month report that provides more depth.

The next question you are probably asking is, “Okay sounds like a good idea how do I create customized reports and schedule them.” Or Said more simply; “How do I do it?”

Customization is a lengthy topic and requires a good deal of planning. However, let’s assume that you are using Google Analytics (if you have a more sophisticated software solution you probably also have access to tech help – use it). There are a series of steps (outlined briefly below) you can use as a good starting point, but they are only a starting point. Customizing your analytics report requires more “how-to” instruction and we will have to tackle that in another venue.

Sending a scheduled report to your email account is relatively straightforward; here are the nine (9) basic steps:

1. Navigate to the report you’d like to receive by email.

2. Click the Email button below the report title.

3. Select the Schedule tab.

4. If you’re sending it to yourself, select Send to me to have it sent to your login email address.

If you’re sending this report to others, enter their email addresses in the Send to others field.

5. Edit the Subject and/or Description if desired.

6. Select a Format in which to receive this report:

PDF – portable document format (you need free Adobe Reader software to view this file)
XML – extensible markup language
Excel – comma separated values (or CSV) a file format used by most spreadsheet applications and text editors
TSV – tab separated values; also readable by most spreadsheet applications or text editors

7. If you’d like to compare the currently selected date range with either the Previous date range make your selection from the Comparison drop-down list.

8. Choose the frequency you’d like to receive reports from the Schedule list.

NOTE – Your options are limited and include: