Get a Weekly Traffic Summary for Your Website

If your website uses Google Analytics, a muse can read it for you and send a weekly summary in plain words: where your visitors came from and whether traffic is rising or falling compared with the week before.

What it does

Analytics dashboards hold the answers, but most small site owners rarely open them, and when they do, the charts take work to read. Connect the account once and the muse does the reading on a schedule. Each week it pulls your numbers, breaks down your traffic sources, such as search, social posts, direct visits, and links from other sites, and compares the total with the previous period so you can see the direction, not just a pile of figures. The summary arrives as a short message you can read in a minute. It gives you a steady picture of whether more people are finding your site, and where they are finding it, without a weekly tour of a dashboard.

How to use it

1. Connect your Google Analytics account and tell the muse which website to report on if you run more than one.
2. Keep the first request simple: "Every Monday, send me a summary of last week's traffic for my site."
3. Ask for the two parts that matter most: "Break the traffic down by source and tell me how it compares with the week before."
4. Read the summary and ask follow-up questions in plain words, such as "Which source grew the most?" or "Did the new page I posted get any visits?"
5. Once the shape looks right, leave the schedule running. Change the day or add a page you care about with a short message.

What you need

• A website with Google Analytics already set up and collecting visits.
• Access to that Analytics account for the muse, through a connection you approve.
• One website picked out clearly if your account covers several.

What to watch for

• The summary can only report what Analytics recorded. A new site with very few visitors will show small, jumpy numbers, and one quiet week is not a trend.
• Traffic going up is not the same as sales going up. Check your orders or bookings separately before you change your plans.
• Give the comparison a few weeks to become useful. Week two against week one tells you little; a steady run of summaries shows the real direction.
• If a source looks wrong, say so. The muse can recheck the account and the date range before you act on a number.