Introduction

Happy Fun Time with Google Spreadsheets

Happy Fun Time with Google Spreadsheets

Photo by craigmoulding. Licensed under CC BY 2
Photo by craigmoulding. Licensed under CC BY 2

About three years ago, Google introduced custom dashboards to Google Analytics. And I rejoiced. I was more than ready to cast off MS Excel for the bounty of beautiful, custom dashboards.

But it didn’t last. This feature lost its luster. So many limitations. The number of widgets. The unavailability of secondary dimensions. I need so much more.

Google Spreadsheets to the rescue.

In the past year, I’ve discovered an array of tools to take your custom reporting to a new level.

Google Analytics Spreadsheet Add-on

Link Google Sheets to your Google Analytics account. Make spreadsheets. Rejoice.

Awesome things I’ve done with it:

  • Secondary Dimensions? That’s so 2013. How about tertiary. Or quaternary. Or quinary (and yes, I did have to look that up). My reports can get as detailed as I need them to be, with minimal effort.
  • Got more than one GA property? Go ahead, run reports for all of them. In one place.

Bummers

There’s a limited number of rows you can return.

Supermetrics For Google Drive

You can connect not only to Google Analytics, but also Facebook, Twitter, MailChimp, and a host more.

Awesome things I’ve done with it:

A dashboard with social activity and website activity? Yes please.

Bummers

The features that make it worthwhile are not free. You’ll pay between $49-$99 a month.

Twitter Archiver for Google Sheets

Query on Hashtags, mentions, or user Tweets. Get lots of data.

Awesome things I’ve done with it:

  • Two words: Word Cloud!
  • Custom Influencer Report.

Bummers

You’ll need to upgrade to a premium account to have more than 2 saved searches.

Google Apps Script

If it doesn’t exist, make it with a script.

Awesome things I’ve done with it:

  • Automatically send scheduled dashboards with custom schedules and custom messaging.
  • Get Graphs to “grow” over time.

Bummers

You’ve got to code. There’s no getting around it.

IFTTT And Zapier

Automation. If something does this, do that.

Awesome things I’ve done with it:

Add calendar information to custom dashboards.

Bummers

  • I’m a little bit nervous of giving a free service API access to so many of my tools. If it gets hacked, it’s a first point of failure.
  • Zapier offers a lot more flexibility than IFTTT. But the free version offers a limited number of zaps. If you want more, it will cost you $25-$125 a month.