Building A Business With The API

Do you like web analytics data? Do you like number crunching in Excel? Get ready to drool once you click on the images below to look at them up close. But don't jump ahead just yet! A little background on a great story...

When we released the Google Analytics Data Export API, we were excited to see what developers would build - but it’s even more exhilarating to see developers profiting from all their hard work. One developer, Mikael Thuneberg, has succeeded in doing just that, by starting a new business consulting around our API called AutomateAnalytics.com.

Mikael started working with the API in June 2009, developing a set of VBA functions to import data into Excel (VBA is Excel's built-in scripting language). His free solution has many benefits:

• It does not require installing plug-ins
  
• Reports are simple to share with others
  
• The functions can be used just like any of Excel's built-in functions like SUM or COUNT

Check out the getting started guide to learn how to use this free tool to generate the jaw-dropping reports below - click images to enlarge:

Click images for larger versions

Because the solution is free and easy to use, Mikael quickly got requests from companies to build custom reports. As he discusses, ”All of these customers have excellent skills for analyzing data, but have asked for help in automating time-consuming manual work, like data retrieval and building custom visualizations.”

One of these came from Sanoma Games, the online gaming unit of Sanoma Group, one of the largest media companies in Europe. Sanoma owns dozens of popular sites, and so it was taking huge amounts of time for their analytics team to keep track of KPIs, let alone gather data for in-depth analysis.

Mikael built an Excel tool for them that fetches and processes the data they need in a matter of seconds. Now Sanoma's analysts can spend their time analyzing and taking action, instead of manually copying the data from one place to another.

Mikael eventually got many requests for customized reports from leading Internet companies, which led him to create AutomateAnalytics. As Mikael says, “I’ve always wanted to run a business. What I thought would be a fun project led into an amazing business opportunity. The Google Analytics API really helped me realize this goal.”

We’re really impressed with what Mikael has done and thrilled to share his story!

Posted by Nick Mihailovski, The Google Analytics API Team