Peter O’Neill of Logan Tod posted an article outlining his requirements for an Excel plug-in for Google Analytics. After a couple of follow-up conversations with Peter, let me respond to his requirements list and show how Nextanalytics for Excel delivers the ideal solution.

First, Peter positioned his need as not just a techie solution, but something that his customers could use. Nextanalytics for Excel has been designed specifically with that target in mind. It provides a highly interactive environment where you can see the results of every action right in your Excel worksheet. At any time, if you see something of interest, you can stop the analysis – no download, export or transfer is required – and continue working with your results in Excel. If you choose to save the analysis, it can be easily refreshed with a single click. This tool does it all!

Requirement: Login access to ensure you can only access the accounts you know email/password to.

Yes. In interactive mode, Nextanalytics requires a Google Analytics account login before any query can be made. If you choose to save your analytics work, an encrypted password is embedded in the command scripts that facilitates one-click refresh. If you favour security over convenience, the encrypted password is easily removed and password entry enforced, or you can protect the workbook itself with a password.

Requirement: Account and profile selection

Yes. To clarify, there is a Google Account that you log in with, and there is an Analytics Account that identifies the web property of interest. Peter meant the Analytics Account. The Analytics account and associated profiles are both provided as drop-down selections (and we support multiple Google Accounts as well). They are provided with both the descriptive name and the ID number, since people may use the same description for multiple items.

Requirement: Ability to select any dimensions and metrics that is available in GA. This would preferably be in collapsible list format, as the segmentation and custom report builders in GA.

Yes, Nextanalytics delivers. All dimensions and metrics are available from a hierarchical pick list with pop-up descriptions. Custom variables and goals are available by their descriptive names as well their ID numbers. The just-announced Adwords ID dimensions will be available in the next release.

Requirement: Ability to select and create segments. Can select predefined segments from the selected profile. Can create dynamic segments whether this is a single or multiple parameters.

Yes. All existing advanced segments are available from a drop-down by descriptive name and ID number. Dynamic segments can be created by modifying the query being sent to Google Analytics in the script command saved in the workbook. This type of advanced activity requires significant skill and knowledge, so it has not been included in the UI at this time.

Requirement: Ability to select if a variable is taken from an Excel cell or is hard coded. Variables which would need to be selectable within an Excel cell are: Account, Profile, Dates, Segment Name (pre-defined), Segment filter (pre-define dimension but can enter value for dimension), Filters

Yes. All Nextanalytics scripts are simple text saved in a worksheet and it is very easy to replace individual parameters with lookups or cell references. In particular, the Google Account, password, profile, floating time period, and all query parameters are available to be dynamically modified. The Analytics Account is actually not used in a query.

Requirement: Copy/paste inside Excel to run same set of queries for a different group of settings. This allows you to set up the one set of queries and then reuse (e.g. the same set of metrics for multiple segments). Paste both absolute and relative to excel cells.

Yes, it is easy to copy and modify Nextanalytics script commands since they are simple text strings. Results of each query can be sent to different worksheets using simple text commands. Individual commands can be replaced with Excel formulas containing cell references or lookups.

Requirement: Select if want to show headings or the first column within the Excel report. Sometimes you need these details, sometimes you need them removed.

Yes. Nextanalytics allows results to be saved as an entire worksheet or using VBA function calls in macro-enabled workbooks. By saving as VBA function calls, you can choose to use only the cell references you want in your dashboard, and can position them on any sheet, in any cell.

Requirement: Ability to set filters using the full list of condition matching from within GA e.g. matches, doesn’t contain, greater than, regular expression.

Yes. Currently filters are not handled in the interactive UI, but the saved query parameters can be easily modified to include any additional parameters you want, such as a custom filter. Whatever Google will accept.

Requirement: Useful error checking (metrics/dimensions greyed out if that combination won’t work).

Yes – and more! We automatically gray-out any invalid metric or dimension as you select, PLUS we dynamically perform the query and display the results so you know the item you picked is actually the one you wanted.

Requirement: Set date ranges e.g. last week, last month.

Yes. The UI has a number of floating periods you can pick from. If you want more flexibility, the saved script commands can be modified to specify the past N days, weeks, months or years, optionally including Today in the date range.

Requirement: Ability to select a range of requests and change date range, profile, account, etc on all in one go.

Yes. Multiple queries in one workbook can reference common cells for date range, profile, etc by simply replacing the query commands with cell formulas referencing the desired value. In fact, many of the templates on Analytics Edge do just that.

SUMMARY

Yes, we can do it all with Nextanalytics, but there’s a lot more. On top of everything listed, Nextanalytics includes a number of features Peter didn’t ask for but would be of tremendous benefit to web reporting. For example, the ability to pivot any dimension against others for segmentation and trend reports; automatically performing multiple queries if the results set is larger than Google’s ten-thousand-row limit; the ability to convert long URL’s into shorter, meaningful descriptions; the ability to dynamically categorize web pages at reporting time;  and, the ability to perform a number of analytic transformations without creating a formula maintenance nightmare (spreadsheet hell).

Finally, while it’s not free like Excellent Analytics, Nextanalytics provides a lot more functionality in an easy-to-use, unlimited (accounts, profiles, queries), permanently licensed Excel add-in (for Excel 2003 or 2007) for about the same price as a limited engagement with Tatvic or Shufflepoint. And once installed, you’ll find there are plenty of other uses for our powerful analytics add-in, where ‘analytics’ has nothing to do with Google…or even the web.