Sometimes called a Google Analytics plugin for Excel, Next Analytics delivers far more than just connectivity — it is a complete web analytics solution integrated into Microsoft Excel.

We’re always working on a new release at Next Analytics — moving the bar a little higher. Making your life a little easier. In response to feedback from people using our product, we focused this release on ease of use, especially for people with busy web sites. Also, in case you didn’t notice, we have extended our support to include Microsoft Excel 2010 as well as Excel 2003 an Excel 2007.

We started by integrating the Google Analytics query panels with our analytics forms. Now you can freely move between Dimension selection and the Pivot function. Add page titles and use the Fix functions to clean them up. View the same analysis for a different web site profile or segment. This is a whole new level of interactivity and power, fully integrated into Microsoft Excel!

In the old version, we confused people at times by arbitrarily limiting it to 10,000 rows when the product had no such limit. If you did raise the number, the product seemed to freeze for a while when you did a big query (it was actually waiting for Google to send the data in 10,000 row chunks). So we raised the limit to 100 million rows (Google’s daily limit) and now include a status update to let you see how it is progressing. And with that much data, we give you two levels of manual refresh control – for the query, and for the analytics – so you can interact with the analytics and not repeat a long query with every change.

The advanced Filter panels are now integrated as well, allowing you to dynamically segment your data after the query. Keep only traffic from a particular source, visits that included more than 5 pages, or started on a particular page (or all of the above). And since this is after-the-fact filtering, you don’t have to set up a profile filter and wait to collect data. Review your old website traffic and see how a particular segment behaved.

We’ve also made it easier to set or change the default account and profile – that’s the one the dashboards will use automatically, without prompting. Just login and save. It really doesn’t get any easier than that! And there is still no limit to the number of accounts or profiles or segments you can use. If you save your passwords, they are encrypted. Default credentials are stored on your PC and not in the worksheets so you can freely shared the results without giving away the keys. Your data flows direct from Google to your PC and there is no intermediate service involved. You are in complete control.

Of course, the product still contains all the powerful capabilities it had before. Query any Google Analytics metrics or dimensions, in any number and combination permitted by Google. Immediately display them in Excel, so you know you got what you were expecting. Combine multiple queries from multiple accounts or web sites. Include information extracted from other systems or databases. Convert your dates to fiscal periods, cryptic web page links to meaningful abbreviations, historical links to their modern equivalents. Aggregate multiple items into categories or business groupings. Pivot or trend your results to immediately see segment variations. Leverage over 100 analytic script functions to build your own key performance indicators or performance metrics. Save and share your analysis in a normal Excel workbook, and refresh it completely with a single click.

Next Analytics delivers a personal analytics solution in a simple Excel add-in. Now even easier to use. I hope you enjoy this new release as much as we do!