Reporting is an essential part of paid search management, whether it’s internal reporting to keep track of performance, or reporting you are sharing with clients. However, it can take up a lot of time.
That’s why I’m always on the lookout for ways to make reporting simpler and faster.
These 4 add-ons below will help to speed up your reporting process from data collection through to data visualization.
Supermetrics
Supermetrics is a powerful tool to import your business data into Google Sheets. It connects to analytics tools like Google Analytics and Moz, social networks including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, payment services like Stripe, along with ads services, databases, and more.
To import data, select the connection and query type, add filters for specific data, and then choose the fields you want to be added to your spreadsheet. Supermetrics will then pull in your data and can refresh it on a schedule to keep your spreadsheet up to date. It can even email you a PDF copy of your spreadsheets whenever the data is refreshed, so you’ll never have to make reports by hand again.
There is a free version of Supermetrics which offers Google Analytics integration with up to 100 queries per month. Paid plans start at $49/month and add more queries per day and other features.
To see a walkthrough of how to use Supermetrics, check out this post.
Power Tools
Power Tools cuts down on the number of clicks you need to make for regular tasks like splitting cells, removing duplicates, changing case, and cleaning up data. If you just need a tool to clean up one thing in your spreadsheet, you can use one of their individual add-ons for that. Or just install Power Tools, their all-in-one add-on that lets you find data, reformat it, split or combine sheets and columns, customize formulas in bulk, and more.
You can choose a new function each time, or the add-on also keeps a history of recent operations so you can re-apply a set of actions to a different data range. You can also save the features you use most frequently to add them to your favorites.
Simple tasks can take up a lot of your time. Power Tools can help you do the following in just one click:
- Advanced find and replace
- Insert cells and shift data down or right
- Delete cells and shift data up or left
- AutoSum all numbers in columns or rows
- Sum by fill and text color
- Flip values in adjacent cells
- Change case
- Freeze or unfreeze top rows and left columns
Power Tools is currently free, but a paid Pro version will be coming soon.
Table Styles
Applying your default color, fonts, and other design elements to new spreadsheets can be very time-consuming. Table Styles allows you to apply a uniform style to your tables with one click. You can select your data and use a pre-defined style that comes with the add-on. You can also create a template from scratch to use in any spreadsheet.
There are 24 pre-defined styles and the current version of the add-on keeps three of the most recent styles you create. You can also edit or delete any of your custom templates.
Table Styles is currently free to add to Google Sheets.
AdStage
AdStage is an awesome reporting tool that makes it easy to analyze ad performance of your PPC campaigns. With the Google Sheets add-on, you can instantly add your paid performance data into your spreadsheet. You can pull in data from Google, Bing, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Yahoo Gemini.
You can then use the A/B testing template to analyze data and find the best campaigns, ads, or ad groups.
You do have to be an AdStage customer to login use this add-on.
These are my favorite tools to cut down on time spent on reporting and performance monitoring.
What are some of your favorite add-ons for Google Sheets? Let us know in the comments below!