Accelerate your thought leadership by contributing to our blog. Join our community of experts now!
Enjoy reading this blog post written by our experts or partners.
If you want to see what Databox can do for you, click here.
In the digital marketing world, you can’t talk about analytics or reporting without talking about Google Analytics. It’s both the king and queen of web analytics.
But lately, we’ve heard from many marketers that the tools they can integrate with GA drive a ton of added value—helping them better understand, contextualize, and act on the data Google Analytics provides and better integrate that data into their day-to-day role.
When we asked how many tools marketers use that are integrated with Google Analytics, more than half said they use between 1 and 3.
But what really stands out is that nearly 35% use between 4 and 6 Google Analytics integrations regularly.
And on top of that, we found that literally everyone we spoke with was either “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with the quality of the integrations they’ve used with GA.
Naturally, we wanted to know what these must-have Google-Analytics-integrating tools are, so we asked some of our marketer friends. They shared 24 uber valuable integrations they can’t live without.
You can skip ahead to those integrations, but we know there are some developers out there who’d prefer to build their own. That’s where the Google Developer Console and Reporting API come into play.
Simply put, the Google Developer Console is where developers can go to build and manage applications and technology that use Google data—whether that’s Analytics, AdWords, or other data. Through the Developer Console, you can access Google’s Reporting API (more on that later) and registers your products and applications to receive data from Google.
To access the Google Developer Console, you can visit here. You’ll need to sign into a Google account, and from there, you can create and manage any projects for which you’ll use the Google API to pull data.
The marketers we talked to raved about 24 of their favorite Google Analytics integrations, but we know there are developers out there itching to build their own integrations with other tools and marketing reporting software.
For those people, there’s the Google Analytics Reporting API—which allows you to access report data from Google Analytics. According to Google, the reporting API means you can:
To build your own Google Analytics integration, you’ll access Google’s API Console and use the setup tool. For more detailed info on building an integration with the Reporting API, Google offers quick start guides for Java, Python, PHP, and JavaScript in their Reporting API v4 guide.
Without further ado, here are the 24 top Google Analytics integrations that our friends across industries can’t live without.
If you want to discover how visitors engage with your website, and which content drives the most engagement and conversions, there are several on-page events and metrics you can track from Google Analytics 4 that will get you started:
And more…
Now you can benefit from the experience of our Google Analytics 4 experts, who have put together a plug-and-play Databox template showing the most important KPIs for monitoring visitor engagement on your website. It’s simple to implement and start using as a standalone dashboard or in marketing reports, and best of all, it’s free!
You can easily set it up in just a few clicks – no coding required.
To set up the dashboard, follow these 3 simple steps:
Step 1: Get the template
Step 2: Connect your Google Analytics account with Databox.
Step 3: Watch your dashboard populate in seconds.
Matt Antonino
Head of Operations, Digital Eagles
What It Does: “Agency Analytics is a full suite of digital marketing reporting tools that integrates your Analytics, SEO rankings, Facebook, Adwords, Email & Call Tracking data into one report. We’re able to set up monthly recurring reports for clients very quickly and get all the information they require in one place.
Value of Integration: Traditionally, clients would need to login to multiple tools (Google Analytics, a rank tracking software, a social media reporting tool, their email marketing software, etc.) and compile all this info themselves. By integrating Analytics with other marketing data, it’s much easier to see a complete picture of the marketing campaigns and results.”
Jim Milan
Communications & SEO Manager, Auto Accessories Garage
What It Does: “My favorite tool that integrates with Google Analytics is a free add-on to Excel, Analytics Edge. It’s great for large ecommerce sites that have many thousands of product pages. Google Analytics only allows you to export 5,000 rows of data by default, but Analytics Edge allows you to get around this export limit and pull up to a million rows of data. You can filter by medium, source, landing page, or almost any other field you can imagine and export your website data with ease. You can pull from select dates and there are options for minimizing sampling so you receive the most accurate data possible.
Value of Integration: Analytics Edge integrates with Google Analytics through a free Google Analytics connector, which connects Microsoft Excel to your Google Analytics account. This allows you to pull up to a million rows of data at a time and splice and dice the data as needed with filtering options.”
Ryne Higgins
Senior Manager of eCommerce & Digital Marketing, Peacock Alley
What It Does: “The dataLayer Inspector is extremely helpful because it allows you to simulate a datalayer push, add code to a page before anything else happens, and hide certain events that have already been pushed. The dataLayer Inspector also offers multiple levels of validation. You can even revert back to 2014’s Classic Mode for a simpler experience.
Value of Integration: This tool works with the Google Tag Manager to help you find out what data is being sent to the Tag Manager, what data is being send to Google Analytics, and when these pushes are happening. You will also be able to see any issues that are happening in conjunction with the Google Analytics Debugger.”
Julien Raby
Founder, Combustible
What It Does: “CallRail is a call tracking system that measures the number of calls generated via your campaigns, website, etc, as well as the quality of them.
Value of Integration: It allows us to analyze the number and quality of calls generated by individual marketing mediums. By knowing exactly how many calls are generated via organic, paid, display, social, etc, we can know the exact ROI of each tactic.”
Remington Begg
CEO & Inbound Strategist, Impulse Creative
What It Does: “Databox ultra-simplifies all of the data for non-marketers. It’s great because by integrating the tools you can show data that matters to the c-suite, or the dev-team. There’s no need for the other party to dig in and try to find items in other tools. It’s just there, updated on the fly, ready for review.
Value of Integration: When you connect Databox to GA you can track just about anything that is available in GA too, I haven’t run into anything the Metric Builder wasn’t able to show me.
Some of the added value is the ability to create calculations across other tools. For instance, average lead value. By integrating QuickBooks and GA to Databox you now have irrefutable data that comes right from the source(s).”
Roman Takac
Founder & Consultant, Teron Solutions
What It Does:
Value of Integration: Pre-built dashboards are the best tools to start. But the user-friendly interface will help everyone to create or rebuild and then visualize exactly what he needs for his business.”
Matthew Engelson
Digital Marketing Manager, Sagefrog Marketing Group
What It Does: “The value of this tool helps me prove ROI to my clients in real-time. Every time we bring up Databox we just don’t regurgitate numbers back to our clients, but explain to them how we are providing value.
Value of Integration: The tool integrates through the Google Analytics API and once we grant Databox permission to our Google Analytics account we can populate our databoards with the metrics our clients are interested in.”
Ben Stanford
Red Cedar Websites
What It Does: “This tool allows you to explore the companies and organizations showing an interest in your business – what they specifically are looking for and it provides their contact information and the company credentials.
By gaining detailed information about your website’s visitors and how they interact with your website, you can begin to create distinct customer profiles for your target audience using tools such as Facebook Ads and Google AdWords.
Value of Integration: You need to allow Fastbase access to your Google Analytics account by clicking the sign-in button once on your dashboard and then entering your Google account credentials. This will automatically bring you to your WebLeads dashboard. It then derives this information from Google Analytics, since this information is mirrored in the company database.”
Rob Stand
Founder, SEObetter
What It Does: “We like to use Firebase to track what actions users have taken on the apps we release to the community.
This is a free app that gives you more information on engagement within your app.
It provides unlimited reporting and the reports actually show you how users behave on your app, so you can make decisions about events and UX.
Value of Integration: We like tracking the performance of our campaigns across organic and paid channels to understand which methods are most effective at driving high-value users and Firebase tells us exactly how to do that.”
Ollie Smith
Founder & Editor, ExpertSure
What It Does: “Google AdWords is a system where advertisers bid on certain keywords so Google will prioritize their clickable ads via search results. AdWords gives me quick results, has unlimited potential, and gives me the ability to cancel AdWords campaigns at a time of my choosing.
Value of Integration: “The integration provides a detailed overview of how your paid traffic is performing.”
Russell Volk
Realtor, Bucks County Homes by RE/MAX Elite
What It Does: “Google Ads is an internet marketing program that helps people run online ads and expand their business. By itself, Google Ads works great and provides a ton of insight into ad performance.
Value of Integration: To integrate Google Ads with Google Analytics, first you need to make sure you have Google Ads account created. In Google Analytics, visit the Admin section, click on All Products and select Google Ads from the list. It’s that simple. Be sure to have “Edit” rights to both, Google Ads and Analytics.
There’s tremendous value of integrating Google Ads with Analytics, because now I have one place where I can manage and analyze data for organic and PPC traffic.”
Lacey Woltz
Digital Marketing Specialist, Blue Compass
What It Does: “Our favorite Google Analytics integration is Google AdWords. Google AdWords is an online advertising service developed by Google that marketers and advertisers can use to display various short ads to reach target audiences.
Value of Integration: The value of linking the two platforms is you get more robust information about how ads are performing because the two platforms can communicate more efficiently. This allows for more meaningful insights when reporting to clients or looking over data internally, in turn leading to better optimizations of content.
Users of Analytics will also be able to see behavior metrics (like Bounce Rate and Pages/Session) for their ads under the Google Ads tab in the acquisition section of Analytics. These metrics can help fill in potential gaps you might be having when pulling reports for your business or clients.
Another great benefit of linking Google Analytics and AdWords is a greater opportunity to create remarketing audiences in that the number of ways you can create retargeting audiences increases. In AdWords alone users can build audiences in the following ways:
Once integrated, you can create audiences in Analytics to import into AdWords that includes user data from Analytics + page engagement data from AdWords.
Overall, integrating the two platforms gives marketing professionals more accurate insights that allow you to take your marketing strategy to the next level.”
Riley Adams
Founder, Young and the Invested
What It Does: “The GADWP allows for complete customization of the Google Analytics experience. You can choose where to place the tracking code in your HTML, you can enable or disable various remarketing efforts, easily track events, and can follow custom dimensions you choose to create.
Value of Integration: This tool uses your tracking ID and populates the Google Analytics website dashboard with all the data you choose to collect on your website visitors. It has helped me to track my visitors better than the Google Analytics functionality included with my site’s theme.”
Benjamin Houy
Founder, Grow With Less
What It Does: “Google Optimize is a simple way to run up to 5 A/B tests without needing to know how to code. There is also a paid version (Optimize 360) which lets you run more than 100 simultaneous experiments.
Value of Integration: Since Google Optimize is also a Google tool, it integrates perfectly with Google Analytics. You can use the integration to see the effects of each A/B test on other aspects of your website and make sure your winning variation doesn’t end up having a negative impact at a later stage of your funnel.”
Jason McDaniel
Senior Data Analyst, SEO My Business
What It Does: “In addition to exposing technical errors that may occur during the crawl, Search Console allows you to get a glimpse into search queries that are driving traffic to your website. It allows you to track keyword performance over a period of three months, allowing you to see how the rank of your high-value keywords are trending over time.
Value of Integration: Search Console links directly with Google Analytics via the Search Console Setting after enabling data sharing in your Search Console property. The tool allows you to see the effect your organic traffic has on your websites. It allows you to easily diagnose keyword specific engagement at a page level, which allows you to further refine your SEO efforts.”
Andy Barton
CEO, Catalystica
What It Does: “HubSpot is an all-in-one sales & marketing platform that includes CRM, marketing automation, website, blog platform, social media publishing and great reporting and analytics.
Value of Integration: Integrating with Google Analytics allows us to track all our website activity within the same tool that we track all our other sales and marketing KPIs.”
Maddy Osman
SEO Copywriter & Founder, The Blogsmith
Value of Integration: “My favorite tool to integrate with Google Analytics is Keyword Hero. Keyword Hero exists because of Google Analytics and, to my knowledge, cannot exist on its own separately from Google Analytics.
Keyword Hero reveals the organic search keywords people are using to find you. Normally, Google Analytics hides this data if people are searching in incognito mode. They lump the corresponding keywords under the useless label “”not provided””.
With Keyword Hero’s simple setup process, you’ll gain access to knowledge previously out of reach. Keyword Hero also sends weekly reports to show you how your keywords are performing, as well as top associated landing pages. They also offer several dashboards you can use to get more out of your Google Analytics data.”
Adam Connell
Founder, Funnel Overload
What It Does: “This tool unlocks keyword data that usually isn’t available in Google Analytics. This means you can get visibility over search queries and user sessions. And see transactional/behavioral data for each query.
Value of Integration: Keyword Hero adds an additional view to your analytical properties/apps inside of Google Analytics. The setup process itself is quite simple. After opening an account, you integrate GA and GSC, then Keyword Hero uploads data back to your GA account.
And because it uses a different traffic view, it keeps your main view isolated in case there are any issues.
There are other solutions on the market for uncovering keywords but this seems fairly accurate. They use 9 different for their data.
One feature I particularly like is the email reports. It gives me a regular top-level view of my most popular search queries without having to leave my inbox.”
Colton De Vos
Marketing & Communications Specialist, Resolute Technology Solutions
What It Does: “Leadfeeder shows you which companies are visiting your website, how they got there (referral, search, social, etc.), and shows you which pages they visited. You can get email alerts when target companies you’ve specified visit your page and if you integrate with your CRM it can be both a very powerful marketing and sales tool.
Value of Integration: Leadfeeder is a Google Analytics app. This tool is actually powered by GA. It mines through your data to give you actionable insights on which companies are visiting your web pages. You can use this insight to analyze if your marketing materials are reaching the right types of companies. You can also enable your sales team to know which businesses are interested based on visitor history. It can turn ‘cold calls’ into ‘warm calls.’”
Mike Schiemer
Owner & Writer, StockMarketOpens.com
What It Does: “Mailchimp is obviously one of the most popular and affordable email marketing and automation platforms available. It’s standalone value is a simple, user-friendly, and highly customizable email marketing and landing page program.
Value of Integration: You can integrate Mailchimp with Google Analytics to get a much better idea of your conversion rates from your campaigns. You’ll be able to more accurately measure sales and other key conversion metrics that came directly from your Mailchimp email marketing. With that additional information, you can determine your exact email marketing ROI, budgeting, sales projections, and other key numbers integral to your overall profit margins.”
Srajan Mishra
CEO, TSI Apparel
What It Does: “Quill Engage does an analysis and delivers the most important and interesting insights from Google Analytics right to your inbox. Reports can be personalized with your own branding elements and can be exported to Google Docs as well. It provides an in-depth analysis of your website’s key performance metrics, including site traffic, traffic sources, goals, and conversions, AdWords, individual page performance, audience segments, and referrals.
Value of Integration: The biggest value with this tool is that it provides all relevant information in plain English which is easy to comprehend and analyze. It helps save us time spent on sifting through all types of data and reports provided by Google Analytics by giving it a more digestible form. Due to its simplified and in-depth analysis of key website metrics, it ultimately helps the company in making informed decisions in a more efficient manner.”
Leigh Simpson
Founder & CEO, Insynth Marketing
What It Does: “SEMRush is an essential tool for monitoring keyword rankings, improving SEO, managing social media and checking on your website health.
Value of Integration: Bu integrating Google Analytics we are able to improve the quality of our reporting, using the latest traffic volume and quality stats to demonstrate the impact of SEO and content marketing activity.”
Kurt Uhlir
Managing Partner & Founder, Ethereal Innovations
What It Does: “They provide the portal-quality property search and other consumer engagement tools Realtors and brokers need to generate leads and build relationships with potential clients.
Value of Integration: Showcase IDX creates individual pages for every local home, condo, and property for sale in a local area and includes the content as native content, as opposed to how older IDXs include this content. Their native integration with Google Analytics allows you to simply add your GA code and they include it on each piece of content created by their system and then triggers GA events when consumers perform different functions on the website.”
Marta KaczmarekAccount Executive, Monday
What It Does: “It’s an all-in-one customer survey software that makes it hassle-free to run micro-surveys at different stages of a buyer’s journey and get valuable insights that can be used for website optimization or product development.
Value of Integration: Survicate and Google Analytics integration enriches quantitative Google’s data with valuable and very often game-changing qualitative data from Survicate.
Although there’s no doubt that quantitative data is essential to run reasonable and complex business processes, qualitative data gives us information about our visitors’ goals and expectations. Survicate and Google Analytics integration users can:
The integration process is simple and takes just a couple of minutes. Survicate answers are sent directly to Google Analytics.”
Drew Beechler
Director of Marketing, High Alpha
What It Does: “Visible helps you create beautiful, easy updates for investors, board members, or your broader team, complete with all the custom charts and reports you could need. Regular communication with investors and important stakeholders is vital to your success as a startup and as a department or team.
Value of Integration: Visible integrates with Google Analytics to pull all your website traffic, events, and campaign data from Google Analytics and being able to compare that with other KPIs across your business and team.”
It’s no secret that Google Analytics is the ultimate hub for website analytics and data. But by using it in conjunction with the other tools that drive your day-to-day like our custom dashboard software, you can do more with that data.
Hey, we’re Databox.Our mission is to help businesses save time and grow faster. Click here to see our platform in action.
Are you maximizing your business potential? Stop guessing and start comparing with companies like yours.
At Databox, we’re obsessed with helping companies more easily monitor, analyze, and report their results. Whether it’s the resources we put into building and maintaining integrations with 100+ popular marketing tools, enabling customizability of charts, dashboards, and reports, or building functionality to make analysis, benchmarking, and forecasting easier, we’re constantly trying to find ways to help our customers save time and deliver better results.
Kiera's a content writer who works with B2B SaaS companies. Catch up with her on Twitter @Kieraabbamonte or KieraAbbamonte.com
Get practical strategies that drive consistent growth