Setting up Google Analytics on your Website

So you’ve got yourself a website. Well done. You’ve written your content, you’ve got your images and now its live on the web. What’s next. Now you NEED to setup Google Analytics to tell you what your site is doing.

Why do I need Google analytics?

Google Analytics is the number 1 statistics plugin for your website. It can tell you who your visitors are, where they are coming from, what they are looking at and how long they are staying on your site. Its that magic piece of information that can help you get traffic to your website.

• More traffic means more visitors.
• More visitors means more customers.
• More customers means more money.

Step 1 Sign up for a Google Account

This is the simplest of steps. Head over to google.com/analytics and hit the ‘Sign In’ button

When the Drop Down menu appears hit the ‘Google Analytics’ link

If you’ve ever signed up for a Google account before – You may have a YouTube account, or a GMail account you can sign in with your username and password. If not – hit the ‘Create Account’ link and follow the steps to set yourself up.

Once you’ve signed in (or created a new account) come back to google.com/analytics

Under the text Start using Google Analytics hit the ‘Sign Up’ button

Once you’ve signed in and signed up you’ll be presented with this long page…

I’m going to concentrate on setting up Google Analytics for Websites

• Account Name – Use your Business or Website name – not the web address
• Website Name – Your business may have several websites – This allows you to differentiate between them. You can also use your web address here
• Website URL – The web address of your website – I prefer to use websites without www on the front. But thats up to you
• Industry Category – Choose the category that best represents your organisation. This allows Google to work towards building tailored reports, customised communication, and better education material. Your selection does not affect tracking and data collection.
• Reporting Time Zone – Select your own time zone – Should auto detect based on your location.
• Data Sharing Settings – This controls what you allow Google to share. Your data is secure and kept confidential – but you can share analytics with different areas to help build a better Google. You do not need to share your data to use Google Analytics.

Once you’ve filled in all the blanks – and un-ticked any boxes you want to opt out of you’re ready to hit the ‘Get Tracking ID’ button

Accept the Google Analytics Terms of Servie Agreement

SUCESS! You should now have something that looks similar to the following screen.

2. Enabling Google Analytics on your Website

If you’re using WordPress

If you are lucky enough to be using the excellent WordPress CMS for your website then you can simply install the amazing Google Analytics plugin by Kevin Sylvestre

Under the Settings Menu you will have a Google Analytics link. Enter your UA code (just copy and paste everything after “Tracking ID” from your Google Analytics screen). NOTE: Be sure to copy and paste YOUR specific code and not the one I’ve got in the screenshots as each UA code is unique to one Google Account / Website.

If you are not using WordPress

If you’re not using WordPress its still very easy to install the Google Analytics tracking code. You will need access to the HTML template files for your website.

Copy all of the code in the box under ‘Website tracking’

Open your website HTML page in a web editor (Notepad ++ is my preferred one) and find the “</head>” tag – and paste the code just above it.

Now save and publish your page and you’re Done!

Now you need to have a little patience and wait for Google to start collecting traffic for your site. This can take anything from an hour to 24 hours. Once your Analytics account is fully active and receiving data you can see this under Admin and Tracking Code and it will say have Status Receiving traffic.