Google Analytics

Have you heard of Google Analytics? Do you know the benefits that Google Analytics can provide you as a website or blog owner?

If you own a single website or blog, host multiple websites, or manage websites for others, Google Analytics can provide you with valuable insight into your website’s visitors and their engagement on your site.

In this multi-part article, we will cover what Google Analytics is, how to install Google Analytics on your WordPress web site, and how to use Goggle Analytics to assist you in increasing visitors to your site along with measuring and improving your visitor’s engagement.

Google Analytics Metrics

Google provides a FREE tool for web site owners called Google Analytics, by registering for a free account, website owners can monitor and track their website’s performance through the use of a multitude of analytical metrics within Google Analytics.

Do you know what your website bounce rate is?
Do you know how your well your visitor engagement is going?
Do you know how many page views per visitor your website averages?
Do you know if your website visitor number is increasing or decreasing?
Do you need “RealTime” Analytics for tracking current campaign performance?

Google Analytics Overview

In this multi-series article we provide an overview of Google Analytics and how you can track your website traffic.

These are just a few of the metrics (measurements) that Google Analytics provides you about your website.

Google’s free analytic application, will assist you in finding the answer to these questions and more.

Armed with this information about your website visitors, you can perform adjustments to your website pages to increase customer engagement, improve on-line marketing campaigns, and maintain repeat visitor performance.

Regardless of the traffic flow your website is experiencing, any website owner can benefit from the information that Google Analytics can provide them about their website and their website’s visitors.

What is Google Analytics

Google Analytics can be considered as, a software as a service application (SaaS) that resides in the cloud. Google Analytics collects website statistics, from your website, and aggregates this data into valuable information which is displayed in a host of available report formats. In addition, you can configure a personalized dashboard view within the application, so that you can quickly see the information about your website that is important to you.

Out of the box, Google Analytics provides a host of reports which are immediately available to you once the application begins gathering statistics from your website.

Getting started with Google Analytics requires you to create a Google Account, setup Google Analytics for tracking your website traffic, and then enabling Google Analytics to track your website’s statistics.  Once these steps are completed you will have a vast resource of information available to you about your website visitors.

Getting Started with Google

Create Google Account

Create New Google Analytics Account

The first step is to create a Google Account.

You can register for a Google account by going to this location (https://accounts.google.com) within Google and clicking on the Create Account link.

Creating a Google Account is an easy process. But, Google does require you to validate your identity to register for an account. The procedure for validating your account is outlined during the registration process.

Complete the account registration process, by supplying the requested information and following the steps outlined to create your account.

If you already have a Google account, then you can skip the Account Creation step and just log into Google with your existing account.

Google has over 45 applications that are available to you, for FREE,  once you have a Google account. Using a single account login, you can access all the applications that google offers.

Google Apps

Google provides over 45 applications available via a single Google Account

 

Launching Google Analytics

There are a number of ways that you can access Google Analytics in your web browser;

  1. You can go to http://www.google.com and then click on the Google Apps icon in the Top Right corner of the page;
    Launch Google Apps

    Google Apps Icon

    This will get you into the Google Apps listing. You will find Google Analytics by clicking on the More Apps link and looking in the Business Section of the Google Apps Product Page.

  2. You can go directly to the Google Apps Product page (https://www.google.com/intl/en/about/products/), in the Business Section you will see the link to Google Analytics

    Google Products Page

    Business Section Google Products Page

  3. Or you can go directly to the Google Analytics page located here (https://www.google.com/analytics/).

Once inside of Google Analytics, the application starts a wizard that will take you through the 3 Step Process required to get up and running with Google Analytics.

Create Your Google Analytics Account

Creating a Google Analytics Account is a simple 3 Step Process;

3 Step Setup Google Analytics

Simple 3 Step Process

The 3 Steps to complete this process are outlined as;

  1. Sign Up for Google Analytics – In this step you will provide Google Analytics with some basic information about the website that you want to monitor.
  2. Add Tracking Code – During this step Google will create a tracking code to paste into your web pages so that Google Analytic’s knows when your site is visited. (This step may seem daunting to those of you that are nervous when “Code” is mentioned, but don’t worry, I will walk you through some easy methods for completing this step on your WordPress website.)
  3. Learn About Your Audience – Once Google has validated your tracking code is installed and operating then it will begin to gather statistics from your website about your visitors and traffic. Within a few hours you will be able to start seeing data about your website.

Let’s walk through each of these steps together;

Sign Up for Google Analytics

To get started, click on the “Sign Up” button on the Google Analytics page under the Start Using Google Analytics section. This will take you to the New Account page;

Google Analytics New Account Page

Create a new Google Analytics Account

What would you like to track?

The Google New Account page is designed so that you can track website traffic or for mobile developers, it can also track mobile application usage. You will want to track website traffic, so be sure that Website is the selected option.

Setting Up Your Account

Provide a name for your account. Accounts are the Top-Level of organization and contain one or more properties (web sites) which will contain one or more tracking ID’s. Enter an account name, you can change this name later if you like, so don’t worry to much about what you call your account.

Setting Up Your Property

Properties are Web Sites, so you are going to provide the following information for your website;

  • Website Name – you can name your website anything you like that will help you to identify which website this is. You can change this name at anytime as desired so don’t worry if you decide to change it at a later time.
  • Website URL – enter your website’s URL. This should be your website’s home page and will normally be entered in the format of www.yourdomain.com . You can select either http:// or https:// for the URL prefix depending on whether you use SSL or not on your main page. If you are unsure then just use the default http://.
  • Industry Category – In the drop down listing, select the industry that most closely matches your websites content niche.
  • Reporting Time Zone – In the two drop downs provided, you can enter your country and the time zone information for your website. In the first drop down, select your country. Then in the second drop down, select the appropriate time zone for your website location. By setting these values the traffic information reported by Google Analytics will be converted to your local time for easy tracking and reporting.

Data Sharing

There are 4 options in the Data Sharing section that you can enable or disable.

Google Analytics Data Sharing

Google Analytics Data Sharing Options

By default they are all enabled, you can disable which ever options you would prefer to not share. The options are;

  • Google Products and Services – This enables the sharing of your analytics data with Google to assist Google in improving Google’s products and services.
  • Benchmarking – enabling this feature contributes your data, anonymously in aggregate form, which allows for benchmarking and publication to assist in understanding data trends.
  • Technical Support – enables access for technical support from Google to assist you, when necessary, to provide service and find solutions to technical issues.
  • Account Specialists – enabling this option provides Google Marketing Specialists and Google Sales Specialists access to your Google Analytics data, as well as your Google Analytics account.

My recommendation is, for you to enable the first three options and then disable the last option. As a small business, you most likely do not have a Google Marketing/Sales Specialist that needs access to your account.

Once you have completed all of the required fields, and supplied the information that Google Analytics needs to create your account and setup your website property, you can click on the Get Tracking ID button at the bottom of the page.

Google Analytics will present you with a Terms of Service agreement, read through it, then click “I Accept”, to accept their agreement and continue to get your tracking ID.

Google Analytics Summary

In this article we walked you through creating a Google Account, accessing Google Analytics, establishing a Google Analytics account, creating your first Google Analytics Property, and obtaining a Google Analytics Tracking ID for your website.

In our next article, for this multi-part series, we will cover How to Install Google Analytics on your WordPress website.

The NetworkCEO

The NetworkCEO

 

 

 

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