Your website is great for getting information about your business to your audience, but did you know that you can track more than just how many people are visiting your website?
Through Google Analytics (also referred to as “GA”), you can accumulate data that will allow you to get to know your audience even better. To help you start tracking your website data for free, we have laid out a step-by-step process to get you set up on Google Analytics.
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact us.
5 Introductory Steps to Set Up Your Website on Google Analytics
Step 1 – Create a Google Analytics Account
Visit analytics.google.com and sign in with a Gmail account. Google will ask for your website URL, industry, and other important information related to your website. Fill those out and you will have completed your first step!
Step 2 – Add Google Analytics to Your Website
This next step may require help from your webmaster or web developer. For GA to provide you data, you must place a snippet of code in the <Head> tag of your website. Placing the tag here makes it possible for GA to track every page of your website. This allows you to track every single click.
How to Install a Google Analytics Tracking Code
Step 3 – Test for Real-Time Tracking
Now, you want to test that GA is tracking live visitors. Open up a fresh browser tab and visit your website. In GA, navigate to the clock icon in the left menu and click Overview.
This page will show you how many active users are on your website. If this view is showing that there is at least one person on the website in your area, congratulations! You’ve got GA installed.
Step 4 – Create Key Filters
Filters are an important part of analyzing data. They provide you with different data sets depending on the kind of data you want to review.
To set up filters, go to ‘Admin,’ then ‘Account’ and click on ‘Account Settings.’ There will already be a default view that you can use as the cornerstone for the following filters.
Raw Data
This is the default, untouched view of your GA data. It is important because it keeps all data safe if another filter is deleted or needs reworking.
Primary View
This view is similar to Raw data, but you will exclude incoming traffic from your IP address. You only want to see incoming traffic from outside of your office since internally you will likely visit your site more regularly and skew the data.
Test View
The test view is your sandbox! This view is similar to the Primary View, but you can use it to explore all that GA has to offer. This will help you become familiar with GA, but also help when it comes to discovering ways to improve your website’s performance.
Step 5 – Set Up Goals
Goals are how you track specific behaviors on your website. A common goal is tracking how many people are going to your contact form to request more information. We recommend setting up a ‘Thank You’ page after a successful form fill to assist with goal tracking.
How to Access Google Analytics Goals
First, you will need to determine the URL of your ‘Thank You’ page. In GA, go to ‘Admin,’ then the third column under ‘Views.’ Click on ‘Goals,’ then ‘New Goal.’ GA supplies templates, but we often use the custom option. In custom goals, a form fill with a Thank You page is considered a destination goal. Destination goals track whenever someone goes to a specific URL on your website.
ProTip: We always recommend leaving the destination set to ‘Regular Expression’ so it won’t exclude any data.
Enter the URL extension for your Thank You page. Lastly, you will want to verify this goal and then click save!
Congratulations! Your Google Analytics is Set Up.
Using GA to gain insight into your audience will help you refine your marketing goals and increase conversions according to your objectives.
Need help setting up your Google Analytics account? Contact us to help get you started.
Happy analyzing!
Data enables marketers to pinpoint the exact moment a message is most relevant to a consumer.
Is your website tracking all the data marketers need to improve your customer journey? What is this data saying about your current website performance? How can your website become even better to help you sell your products and service?
CONTACT US to schedule a complimentary website audit to check your site’s performance.