18 Dec: Google Analytics is such a good free web analytics package, it’s hard to think of a really good reason why it’s worth paying for something to do that kind of job. Web analytics is a brilliant source of insight into what’s happening with your site, but too often it’s left as another job for the web team, who frankly have enough things to log in to all day long.
One of Google Analytics’ really nice features is the scheduled email report, which delivers a summary of your latest website analytics data in PDF, CSV or XML formats direct to your (internal) client’s inbox. You set it up, choosing who you’d like to send the report to, what covering email text it should come with, and whether to send it daily, weekly or monthly. And by magic, it will drop into their inbox, neatly wowing them with your insight and diligence, and more seriously, reminding them of their online audience.
We’ve been using the automated daily reports on data.gov.uk for some time now to distribute to the client & internal team and I’d thoroughly recommend it.
Also – the Google Analytics iphone app is brill; it is paid for but good for people on the go.