Sometimes, it just seems like there are not enough hours in the day to get all your work done. This can especially seem true in analytics, where crunching numbers and digging through data can quickly become a time-consuming task. Thankfully, there’s a couple easy ways you can make the whole process much more efficient.

For example, if you find yourself pulling the same customized reports week after week or month after month, take the time to bookmark the report. Bookmarking essentially lets you save a report for future use so that you don’t have to go back and start it from scratch each time. You’ll be surprised to learn how much time and effort this saves. The next time you log into your web analytics tool, you’ll only be one click away from the data you want – just change the reporting date on your bookmarked report and you’ll be set!

Another cool – not to mention underutilized – functionality of web reporting is scheduled reporting for email delivery. Make it work for you: configure your web analytics tool to deliver reports on a daily, weekly or monthly basis, depending on your preference. It’ll save you time, and best of all, your reports will always be ready and waiting for you in your inbox.

This last benefit is especially important. There have certainly been times when I’ve found myself trying to compile a monthly report, only to deal with an interface that was particularly slow and/or buggy that day. That’s what makes scheduled reporting for email delivery so valuable: everything’s taken care of for you (you won’t even have to deal with the hassle of logging in and accessing your tool!) Plus, if for some reason you forget to check your analytics, no problem – scheduled reporting makes sure the analytics comes to you instead!

Reporting doesn’t have to be a time-consuming burden. Even seemingly simple features like bookmarks and scheduled reporting for email delivery can go a long way towards increasing efficiency, so don’t overlook them. When you’re deep in numbers and constantly mining through data, you need all the support you can get, and with these two features, the customized data you want will always be waiting patiently for you in your inbox, ready to greet you hello.