Guide to data analytics automation

Without data, you have to rely on gut instinct or anecdotal evidence when making decisions. Obviously, that's not the best way to grow your business. You need the numbers (we all know they don't lie) so you can better understand things like your target audience, make informed decisions about your content and sales, and even improve your budget and company spend. 

From website performance to tracking customer actions, having proper data analytics tools in place is a great place to start. But if you rely on manual data entry to connect analysis to action, feedback can get stale and you'll miss your window of opportunity. 

Zapier can help you integrate your analytics tools with your website, team, and reporting tools, so incorporating feedback becomes an immediate, natural part of your workflow. Here's how.

Skip ahead

• Analyze website performance and traffic data

• Feed user engagement data into analytics tools

• Automatically monitor your sales strategy

• Use AI to understand metrics and performance

• Get high-level insight into team performance

Analyze website performance and traffic data

No one should have to tell you something is wrong with your website. The performance of such essential infrastructure should receive the kind of constant monitoring that's possible only with automation.

These Zaps integrate communication tools with services that monitor your website, so you can get a notification the moment there's an issue.

The ability to automatically monitor your site isn't only for catching issues. You can also analyze the kinds of traffic arriving at your website and use that data to inform your marketing and lead-generation programs.

Feed user engagement data into analytics tools

Smart businesses capture as much user engagement data as they can. Your monitoring tools might prove your website is functional, but your users will still suffer if they have to swat away irrelevant messages or endure repetitive phone calls.

Chatbots can automate some of this user engagement, especially lead cultivation and customer support, but hands-off approaches can easily become more annoying than convenient. Your chatbots won't be effective for long if you can’t improve them.

Use these automated workflows to connect your chatbots to data analytics tools so you can track their performance over time.

Phone support can be frustrating for customers who get lost in automated menus and feel it's hard to connect with someone who can help.

Make it easier to spot trends in support needs by connecting your phone or SMS tools with your analytics program or project management program, ensuring each call creates data you can analyze and act on.

Automatically monitor your sales strategy

It's easy to let sales consume every hour of the day. But if you don't pause to reflect on your methods, you risk sacrificing long-term victories for small, short-term wins.

High-performing sales teams take monitoring seriously. Basing your sales strategy on data means you can test new things, see their impact, and improve over time, letting you make bigger, better, and faster sales.

Use these automated workflows to connect tools like Google Analytics and Zoho Analytics to your advertising, purchasing, and customer management tools.

Tracking sales progress is easiest across integrated tools, but once a sale moves to the meeting or phone call stage, data can be more elusive. Use these Zaps to keep track of new meetings and calendar invites.

Use AI to understand analytics

With the onset of AI tools, understanding key insights from your data has never been easier. Whether you're tracking trends, monitoring performance, or just trying to make sense of complex numbers, AI-powered analysis can give you the clarity you need to make smarter decisions.

Fortunately, tools like ChatGPT or AI by Zapier can do the heavy lifting. With these tools, you can analyze complex datasets—like customer engagement metrics or sales reports—and break them down into actionable insights that are easy to understand.

And when you pair your AI tool with Zapier, you can automate the entire analysis process across your favorite apps. Whether you store visual data sets in Google Drive or send CSV files to your team via Gmail, these Zaps will analyze them for you using AI. After generating that analysis, Zapier will send that back to an app of your choice. 

Get high-level insight into team performance

Internal analysis is important, too. With Zapier, you can automatically feed your team's actions into project management tools, make those new actions trackable, and connect that improved work back to your analytics tools.

To start this feedback loop, use these workflows to help you automatically turn your team's communication and collaboration into trackable actions.

Before you can properly assess your team's performance, that data has to come from a central place. These workflows connect your analytics tools to your team's project management and to-do list apps, so you can easily track your team's actions.

Learn from your results and repeat the cycle

Zapier automation enables the feedback cycle to spin with less effort, meaning you can act faster and iterate based on more up-to-date information. Without working harder, your team can be more efficient and effective. Every action from your team and reaction from your customer becomes an insight that your organization can use to improve.

This article was originally published in June 2020. It was most recently updated in November 2024 by Elena Alston.