Automate Google Analytics Reporting using Google Apps Script

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());

// Make Sandwich.

To get started now, read our Automated Access to Google Analytics Data in Google Spreadsheets tutorial. Also check out the Google Analytics Apps Script reference docs.

Solving Business Problems

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.

Posted by Nick Mihailovski   profile Nick is a Senior Developer Programs Engineer working on the Google Analytics API. In his spare time he likes to travel around the world.

AdWords Community: now in Traditional Chinese

In February 2012, we launched the AdWords Community in six languages. Since then we have been receiving constant positive feedback from our users, who appreciate the improved site navigation and new forms of content, as well as high quality of discussions and the presence of knowledgeable AdWords professionals. This encouraged us to continue rolling out the new AdWords Community platform to more languages. In June we launched the site in Italian, and today we are glad to announce that AdWords Community is now available in Traditional Chinese.

The new Adwords 社群 caters to all AdWords advertisers who speak Traditional Chinese. This is a big step towards helping AdWords customers get the best out of AdWords and out of the web, an opportunity to learn more about online marketing and usage of AdWords by exchanging advice, ideas and best practices. Now in addition to getting professional help via email, phone, chat or Help Center, advertisers who speak Traditional Chinese can connect online with AdWords professionals, other advertisers and Google employees.

You can visit, search and browse the new AdWords 社群 without registration. If you want to ask a question, simply log in with your Google Account and choose a username.

We hope you will enjoy the social interactions and the wealth of business knowledge that will be available on this new Community!

Posted by Lina Lau, AdWords Online Help Lead for China

Wake Up Your Brand the Starbucks Way

Last week, I spoke for the South Carolina Credit Union League about Creating Authentic Brands.  During my session, I used Starbucks as an example of an organization who built an authentic brand.  And, in typical me-style, I think I insulted about half the room.

You see, I added the aside that I felt Starbucks' great brand was built despite an inferior product.

We then spent the next 5 minutes arguing about coffee.  Actually getting passionate about a roasted bean.

Through this discussion, I inadvertently proved my point … Great brands are more about emotion than logic.  By simply stating my opinion that Starbucks is bitter and subpar, I evoked an emotional response to defend a loved brand.

So, how did Starbucks do it?

In his book, Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time, Howard Schulz, Starbucks’ Director of Retail Operations and Marketing, expressed how the brand is central to Starbucks’ business:

“Authentic brands do not emerge from marketing cubicles or advertising agencies. They emanate from everything the company does, from store design and site selection to training, production, packaging and merchandise buying. In companies with strong brands, every senior manager has to evaluate each decision by asking, 'Will it strengthen or dilute the brand?'"

This is great advice if you want your customers passionate about your brand … out there defending your honor, like knights on white steeds, every time some opinionated loud-mouth like me puts you down.

By putting as much emphasis on the experience as in the product, you can differentiate yourself and build an authentic brand … just like Starbucks.

"Starbucks’ role is to provide uplifting moments to people every day. I didn’t say coffee. Starbucks is not just a pound of coffee, but a total coffee experience."

~ Scott Bedbury, Senior Vice President of Marketing, Starbucks

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to run to Caribou for a Northern Lite white chocolate latte with extra espresso.

Take care,

Eric

With more than 120,000 visits worldwide, we hope that you enjoy this blog.  If you find it helpful, please share it with your colleagues.  Also, check out our YouTube Channel for short video blogs.  

We bring these marketing philosophies to community banks and credit unions nationwide, and would love to bring them to your institution too.  Contact us to see how.

MarketMatch is also a nationally and internationally requested speaker.  Contact us to bring our marketing ideas to your next conference.

Here are the conferences where you can find MarketMatch.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

MarketMatch is a marketing firm, dedicated to the credit union and community banking community.  We utilize knowledge-based strategies to help you FOCUS on the right story that will generate the greatest  MOMENTUM and prove the best RESULTS with our written ROI Guarantee.

See our story here. (click)

Chat with me LIVE! (click)

Or email me directly (click)

937-426-9848

Don't Miss What's New In Analytics Each Month: Opt-In For The Product Update

Google Analytics is constantly being updated to provide you with powerful analytical tools and the best user experience possible. As a marketer or analyst, keeping up with these regular changes, updates, and tools will help you be more effective. You may already refer to our blog, Google+, and Twitter feed to stay up to date. Do you also know about our monthly product update email that compiles the Analytics highlights for the month?

Opt in to this email and learn each month about:

 - New features available in Google Analytics

 - Insights on how to use these latest tools

 - Case studies & educational content

 - Links to how to videos & webinars 

… all delivered right to your inbox so you can stay in the know.

How do you make sure you’re opted in? 

It’s easy, if you’re already logged in to Analytics use this link to be taken to the settings page in your account. Or follow these steps:

Step 1. Log in to your Google Analytics account.

Step 2. Click the “Settings” button in the top right corner of your screen.

Step 3. Under ‘Google Analytics Email Communications’ heading, be sure that the ‘Feature Announcements’ checkbox is selected.

Step 4. Hit the “Save User Settings” button at the bottom on the page.

We encourage you to opt-in if you haven’t, and if you are opted in and have ideas on how we can improve our monthly updates, please let us know by adding comments to this post.

Posted by Ian Myszenski, Google Analytics team

DoubleClick Search gets UI, control, and transparency improvements with new Performance Bidding Suite

(Cross-posted from the DoubleClick Search Blog)

If you're a current DoubleClick Search user, or are considering DoubleClick Search as a solution for managing across platforms, we're excited to bring you some new product updates to provide a smarter, more intuitive bid management experience.

As a search marketer, you know that bid optimization is one of the critical aspects of managing search at scale, providing sophisticated technology to meet your unique business goals. Over the past 18 months, the DoubleClick Search team has been focused on enhancing our automated bidding tools -- understanding that this is the engine that drives campaign performance. We've rebuilt our bid optimization platform from the ground up (-- no single line of code is the same!), and our users are already seeing some impressive results: 88% have experienced significant improvements in campaign performance, with 50% doubling their conversions at half the CPA.

Our investments in bid optimization span beyond revamped technology and algorithms. We wanted to make it easier for you to state your goals and monitor performance, to better harness and discover the power of automated strategies. The result is our new Performance Bidding Suite, which includes updates to the user interface (UI), new strategy options, and increased transparency into bid engine decisions. With our Performance Bidding Suite, you can:

• Quickly find the right goal with a refreshed user interface. Easily express bid optimization goals that match your business objectives. Whether you’re looking to maximize revenue or target a position, the new UI makes it even easier to find the right strategy for your unique goals. Our updated UI is designed to capture new bid strategies as they are released.
• Easily enter your Target Spend goals. With our new Target Spend strategy, maximize important KPIs like actions, transactions, revenue or clicks within a given monthly spend. Learn more
• Efficiently set default minimum and maximum bids on a strategy. Spend more time managing bid limits for the keywords you care about most, while DoubleClick Search handles the rest through a bid strategy-wide setting.
• Exercise even more advanced controls. The Advanced Configuration tab in the new bid strategy UI is designed for those who want even further influence bid strategies. The first option we’re releasing gives you control over how a bid strategy handles high-traffic or low-converting keywords in ROI strategies. Stay tuned for more advanced controls. Learn more

In addition to a cleaner interface, new strategies, and advanced controls, the Performance Bidding Suite provides increased transparency into bid decisions and impact. Drive more insights with features that allow you to:

• Chart your Max CPC bids to visualize trends over time. You can now chart keyword bids for a defined date range, alongside any other metric in our UI to easily analyze bidding frequency and bid changes.
• Better understand our decision-making with bid rationale summary. As part of the change history tool, our new bid rationale feature (beta) reveals the reasoning behind any changes to specific bids.
• Preview intended bids. Our bid preview feature shows the target bid DoubleClick Search intends to submit for a particular keyword. This provides insight into the range of bids the system is likely to submit, based on the current bid and performance, to offer guidance in setting bid limits.

With these transparency features from the Performance Bidding Suite, you have powerful insights into how different settings impact campaign performance, and can tweak these settings if needed.

If you'd like to get started exploring the Performance Bidding Suite, you can check out the latest release notes and updated articles in the Help Center, or enroll in our Introduction to the Performance Bidding Suite training here.

Posted by Ardan Arac, Product Manager, DoubleClick Search

Overcoming the Ostrich Strategy by Effectively Using Your Strategic Plan

I would like to welcome Ward C. Schendel, a business coach based in Minnesota, to my blog. Ward and I met because we’re both guest bloggers for a legal and marketing blog called DuetsBlog, and we recently had a discussion about the importance of strategic plans. Based on our discussion, we decided to collaborate on a joint post, and it follows below. For more information about Ward, check out his website and connect on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.

http://knowledgesphere.advicoach.com

http://www.linkedin.com/in/wardschendel

http://www.twitter.com/bizcoachmn

http://www.facebook.com/KnowledgeSphere

____________

 

Sohrab Vossoughi, founder of consultancy Ziba, said, “When root problems aren’t solved, you only get momentary innovation.” The best way to solve root problems is to address them in your strategic plan and then follow the plan – this will reduce the tendency to use the ostrich strategy. 

The ostrich strategy is named after the myth that an ostrich, when in danger, will bury its head in the sand. For purposes of this post, we are using the ostrich myth as the basis for what has become a popular and ineffective business strategy for avoiding difficult challenges.

If a business is making money, increasing its customer base, and receiving positive feedback, does it still need a strategy? Absolutely! What happens when the company starts losing customers? What happens when some of those positive reviews turn negative? And what happens when employees start making their exodus? Do you, as a business leader, resemble an ostrich and bury your head in the sand?

Some companies are created from innovative ideas. Consider Apple’s iPod or iPhone, Amazon.com, or Starbucks – these companies and/or their products transformed industries. Consider how easy it has become to make online purchases instead of driving to the mall. These companies and many others, both large and small, have strategic plans that set the stage for all contingencies, both good and bad.

But the truth is, many companies lack a strategic plan. They choose to, instead, move through the motions. Top leadership teams monitor employees but don’t share leadership strategies. Even worse, these leaders don’t share their strategic vision, which results in poor employee morale. When employees understand their part in the overall strategy, they feel empowered, engaged, and valued – and they genuinely want to give 110% to support the overall strategy of the business.

A perfect example about the lack of strategic planning in the marketing arena is social media. Many CEOs and marketing teams jump into social media by haphazardly creating a Facebook page or Twitter page without evaluating how those efforts will impact the overall marketing plan. Do a company’s target customers actually visit Facebook and Twitter? Will the target customers comment and interact if those pages are created? Do personnel exist to consistently update and maintain these pages? Lastly, how does a social media presence (on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.) align with a company’s annual marketing plan and traditional campaigns (email marketing, printed brochures, main website or landing pages, public relations, and advertising)?

So how do business owners and executives avoid the ostrich strategy? First, develop a strategic plan that answers the following five questions:

[1] What is the basis (core values) for your business?

[2] What is the why (purpose) behind your business?

[3] Where do you want your business to be 10 years from now?

[4] What are you going to do to get there? (1-year goals and initiatives)

[5] How will you achieve your goals? (Action steps for the next quarter)

Second, own and follow your strategic plan. When challenges arise, and they will, immediately turn to your strategic plan. It will provide the roadmap you need to meet your challenges. If an effective strategic plan exists, the answers to your challenges will be firmly in place. This doesn’t mean that you won’t need to make adjustments from time to time, but it does mean that the foundation exists to guide you in making those adjustments.

Consider this example. A business owner (Buzz) was faced with a dilemma. His son (Junior) had recently obtained his college degree and wanted to join the family business. Junior expressed an interest in following Buzz as the head of the company. The problem was that Buzz had a loyal employee (Nick) who had worked with him for years, knew the business inside-out, and had a much better business sense than Junior. What should Buzz do?

Fortunately, Buzz had worked with a coach and developed a strategic plan. He identified his values, which were integrity and treating employees with respect and gratitude so that the employees would duplicate the same behavior with customers and vendors. Buzz pulled out his one-page strategic plan. He searched the section that answered the question: What is the why behind your business? There was nothing about taking care of Junior. Instead, there was a section about values, integrity, and treating employees with respect and gratitude. For Buzz, the answer was clear: Junior could be an employee, but according to the succession plan, Nick was his first choice.

If Buzz had demonstrated the ostrich strategy, he would have avoided a decision. But by effectively using his strategic plan, Buzz addressed the issue and followed the company’s core values. In other words, his strategic plan achieved its intended purpose.

Has YOUR company overcome the ostrich strategy with a strategic plan?

____________

Image Credit: Thanks to Ted Goff for use of his cartoon with this post. Check out his work at http://www.tedgoff.com.

So You Weren't An Early Adopter: How to Kick Start Social with Google+

Join social media power influencer +Lynette Young for a look at ways your business can kick start its presence on Google+ in a Learn with Google Hangout on August 23rd at 1pm EDT/10am PDT.  RSVP for the Hangout on our Google+ Event page.

Companies big and small are using social media to interact with customers and build digital brands. Even if your business wasn’t an early adopter of social, Lynette will guide you through ways to kick start this channel with Google+. In this hangout, she’ll talk through examples of businesses using hangouts, pages and unique content to grow their audience. As a Learn with Google program, you’ll also hear lots of tips and strategies you can use to build a community from scratch on Google+.

Lynette Young is a digital media specialist helping entrepreneurs and businesses put social ideas into action. She is the founder of Women of Google+ and CEO of Purple Stripe Productions. Kari Clark of the Google+ Marketing team will moderate the conversation with Lynette and other social media specialists including:

• +Esteban Contreras from +Samsung
• +Kip Wetzel from +Comcast
• +Ricky Cadden from +RadioShack

We hope you can join us to begin using Google+ for your business. If you have a question for the panel, leave your questions as a comment on our Google+ Event.

To get yourself geared up for the hangout, check out the two newest Google+ business case studies. Toyota Global has been engaging its Google+ community with content of the latest car models and a hangout with a Toyota engineer. By incorporating Google+ badges on its website and YouTube channel, the car manufacturer has grown to over one million followers. In the education space, ES Corporation is teaching English lessons in hangouts. Using social extensions, the business also saw a 46% increase in click-through rate on search ads.

Posted by Lindsay Rumer, Google+ for Business