If you’ve been following my web analytics work, you know that I’m a major fan of Excellent Analytics. I have news. There has been a major (and much-needed, considering the changes by Google Analytics API), of their terrific Excel Add-on. Here are a few of the improvements and additions, as listed in the announcement of the Excellent Analytics update:
- All dimensions and metrics are up to date. I.e. everything made available to the API should be included in EA.
- A new tab in the menu bar, “Settings†has been added. You can access proxy settings at any time if you’re using a proxy and need to enter your settings. Before it only popped up when it seemed to be needed. In the settings dialog you can also find “Request timeoutâ€, increase this figure if you have problems logging in. “Update metrics†and “Update dimensions†will make it easier for us to make sure you always will be able to access new metrics and dimensions as Google add them to the API. Before we needed to make a new release of EA for every update.
- You can choose to save your password locally on your computer if you do not want to enter it every time you open Excel. It won’t be stored in clear text. We do not store your password anywhere for you. It’s only stored on your computer. If you don’t want your password stored at all, just don’t check “Remember password.â€
- EA checks for updates every time you use it. If there is a newer version of EA you’ll be prompted to download it. You can also ask to be reminded again later.
- Improved user interface. Some things like sorting and profile selection have been moved.
- Make a query and run it for multiple profiles at once! Before you could only create a query for one profile at a time. Note that you, however, when you want to update data per profile, have to do one update per profile. It’s for that initial creation that you can run one query for multiple profiles. This makes creating your report templates easier.
- Multiple level sorting of data. I.e., you are able to sort by descending x and then by ascending y, etc.
This application is, for the moment, free and open-source. It’s a valuable web analytics resource!