{"id":945,"date":"2011-08-19T09:55:55","date_gmt":"2011-08-19T09:55:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cxfocus.com\/?p=945"},"modified":"2013-07-02T12:37:53","modified_gmt":"2013-07-02T12:37:53","slug":"download-report-days-week-google-analytics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cxfocus.com\/index.php\/google-analytics-tips\/download-report-days-week-google-analytics\/","title":{"rendered":"Download Custom Report to Compare Days of the Week in Google Analytics"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Screenshot:<\/a>Here’s a great custom report for you to try. There’s a link below to import the report straight into GA, but first let me explain why I think this is so exciting.<\/p>\n

Retailers and other web sites with strong weekly visitor patterns need to be able to compare Mondays with Mondays and Saturdays with Saturdays.<\/p>\n

Comparing the same day of each week over a long period is also very useful for any site planning emails or any other form of on-line campaigns.<\/p>\n

So I was really excited when a comment on Linked In<\/a> from Mike Sullivan of Nextanalytics<\/a> provided me with the key to doing this.<\/p>\n

Although I’m a huge fan of Custom Reports, for some reason I had not noticed that ‘Day of Week<\/strong>‘ is available as one of the dimensions.<\/p>\n

In v1 of Google Analytics you used to be able to select all the ‘Mondays’ in a month by clicking on the top of the column in the calendar. But you could only do one month at a time and even that ability disappeared in later versions. It became necessary to do this kind of reporting outside of GA using Excel or a dashboard client.<\/em><\/p>\n

Now you can do it all in a custom report, so I’ve made an example ‘weekday<\/strong>‘ report which you can download using a link at the end of this article.<\/p>\n

Using Custom Reports is so much better and allows you to experiment with using secondary dimensions at the top level of the report. ‘Dimensions’ is the GA word for ‘what the data is that you’re looking at the numbers for’ — the information in the first column of the table. Dates or Days in this case. So you could add the source\/medium for each day next to it in a second column, for example. <\/p>\n

But first take a look at this standard version:<\/p>\n

\"Screenshot:<\/a><\/p>\n

But my favourite view at the moment is to use ‘Day of Week’ as the top level dimension, and then drill down to ‘Date’. By using Custom Reports you can add a new tab to view the data that way round:<\/p>\n

\"Screenshot:<\/a><\/p>\n

I’ve added the names of the days to the screenshot so you can see what’s happening. The report just shows the number of the day: 0 for Sunday, the first day of the week and 6 for the last day, Saturday.<\/em><\/p>\n

This version of the report means you can see the average figures for all 7 days of the week compared to each other over an extended period. You can then drill down to see how each of the ‘Tuesdays’ compare with each other. That’s the insight which interests me most<\/strong>. The chart also updates to match, so you can choose whether to leave it with a single spike for one day each week, or change to ‘Graph by week’ view to see a continuous line.<\/p>\n

\"Screenshot:These reports work really well in ‘Comparison View’ and ‘Performance View’, so be sure to experiment with those. But I’ve discovered that you can’t sort by the day of the week when you’re using that view, so you’ll need to be careful. There have been changes to the sorting functions during the last few weeks (weighted sort appeared and then disappeared), so this situation may well change.<\/p>\n

How to Make a Day of the Week Custom Report in Google Analytics<\/h2>\n

The simple clue that ‘Day of Week’ is available as a dimension will have been enough for some people.<\/p>\n

If you’d prefer to see how it’s done, I’ve made a 5 minute video showing each step.<\/p>\n

Or if you’d prefer to save some time, use the link below the video to import a copy of the report and then edit it to match your business needs.<\/p>\n