We use Google Analytics on our sites and our client sites because it offers excellent statistics and customisation possibilities, integrates beautifully with Google AdWords, and it’s completely free.

If you’re anything like me, you’re so busy running your business that things like checking on your web site visitor statistics can slip through the cracks. Unfortunately this means that our web sites could be trying to tell us things about our business and the market, but we’re not listening!

Someone at Google was obviously thinking of us, because any report in Google Analytics can be added to an email that is sent to one or more email addresses on a daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly basis.

Personally, I opt for the weekly report. Because Google is based in the US and it systems works on that timezone, this means that every Tuesday morning I get an email with a PDF attached with the most important stats in it.

My report contains:

  • a visitor overview, which gives me the number of visitors, pageviews, time spent on site and bounce rate, as well as some information on which browsers my visitors are using
  • a Search Engine report, which tells me which keywords people are using to find our site
  • a Referring Sites report, which lists all the web sites that have sent us traffic in the last week
  • a Top Content report, which shows which pages on our site were visited the most

I find that these reports give me just the right amount of information – to see if any new sites are linking to us, or if a particular keyword or page on the site is generating a lot of interest – without drowning me in numbers. However, any report that you see in Google Analytics can be emailed, just by clicking on the Email button at the top of each page. If you’re running any Google AdWords campaigns, for example, you’ll definitely want to include reports relating to that.

Because I get it right in my inbox, it only takes me a few minutes to scan through my reports. And most importantly, because it arrives automatically every week, I don’t forget to go look!