If you have a website, it’s important to keep track of everything that happens on it. One of the best ways to understand how your website performs is through website analytics tools such as Google Analytics. In this article, you will learn how to set up Google Analytics and start gathering valuable insights about your website.
What is Google Analytics?
Google Analytics is a website and app analytic solution developed and supported by Google. It helps users to understand their audience and how they interact with their websites or apps. It’s an essential tool for anyone who has a website and is serious about growing it.
To use it, you only need to create an account and link it to your website through a small JavaScript tracking code.
Once set up, Google Analytics will provide a detailed view of your website’s performance, including traffic patterns, user demographics, session durations, and specific actions (like clicks or downloads). You can use this information to make smarter decisions to improve your site and serve your audience better.
Importance of Setting Up Google Analytics For Your Website
Without knowing your visitors’ behaviours, it will be difficult to tell what they want and how to improve your website to fit their preferences. Google Analytics removes the guesswork by providing real data about your visitors and their behaviour.
For example, you can see which blog posts or products are popular and focus on them. It also shows the problem areas, like where visitors exit or parts of your site that might be difficult to navigate.
Here’s how Google Analytics can help you understand and improve your website:
- Discover your top-performing content: Helps you identify pages or blog posts that get the most attention. With this data, you can create more of what your audience loves and keep them coming back for more.
- Know your website visitors: It gives you clear insights into who your visitors are, where they come from, how they found your website, and what they like most. This helps you fine-tune your content to match their preferences.
- Catch and fix issues early: Google Analytics helps you identify and resolve errors before they snowball into bigger problems.
- Help optimize your ads: If you run ads, Google Analytics will tell you which campaigns perform well and which ones don’t. This ensures you’re spending money on the right ads and not wasting them.
How To Set Up Google Analytics
Google Analytics is easy to set up, and the best thing is that it’s absolutely free to use. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to set it up for your website:
Step 1: Sign Up for Google Analytics
To create an account, you need to sign in to your Google account first. If you’re already logged in, head to the Google Analytics homepage and click the “Start Measuring” button.
Step 2: Set Up Your Account
In this step, you are required to enter your account name and configure the settings for your account data. After that, click Next to proceed to the next step.
Step 3: Create a Property
The next step is to create a property. A property here is where all the data from your website or app is collected, organized, and stored within your Analytics account.
Here, you will need to enter your property name, adjust your reporting time zone, and select your preferred currency.
The property will allow you to:
- Manage data collection
- View reports
- Manage privacy settings
- Manage attribution
- Manage product links
Step 4: Enter Your Business Details
In this step, you will need to describe your business to help Google Analytics provide the best insights for it.
Select the most suitable category your business falls into from the drop-down menu, then choose the size of your business according to the number of employees you have.
Step 5: Choose Your Business Objectives
This is where you are required to select the reports that are important for your website. The options to choose from include:
- Leads
- Sales
- Traffic
- User engagement and retention
- Other
After choosing your options, click Create and accept Google Analytics terms and conditions.
Step 6: Set up Data Collection
Here’s where you add your website URL and web stream name. Locate and select the “Web” option at the top of the page, then type in your website’s address and web stream name.
Ensure the URL is accurate so that your site will be properly linked and recognized. After that, click “Create and Continue.”
Step 7: Set up a Google tag
Google Tag is the Javascript code snippet for your website. Google Analytics will generate this unique tracking code for you. Copy and paste it into the HTML of each of your website’s pages, immediately after the <head> element. To avoid errors or inaccurate data collection, add only one Google tag per page.
Step 8: Verify and Test
Once you’ve added the tracking code to your website’s HTML, it’s time to ensure everything is functioning as expected. Go back to Google Analytics and click “Test Installation” to confirm that the setup is successful.