Get Started with Google Analytics
Why are web analytics important for my business?
What is Google Analytics?
How do I set up Analytics?
Imagine Kim and Jim are recent college grads who start an online store that sells novelty t-shirts with funny slogans and pictures.
Jim thinks of the shirt ideas and prints them, while Kim is in charge of marketing. She starts by buying search ads and making a lot of social media and blog posts to try and attract customers.
After a few weeks, orders start to come in. Jim and Kim are feeling pretty good about their business.
But could it be doing even better?
You can find out how well your marketing channels have been working by using an analytics program.
One program you can use is Google Analytics, a no charge tool that shows you data about your website so you can measure how well your digital marketing is performing and gain insights about how to improve.
Analytics gives you useful statistics, such as how many users are coming to your site, where they’re coming from, and what they’re doing when they get there. You can see reports with this data on an online dashboard.
Beyond showing you statistics that help measure your marketing, Analytics can show you how people interact with your marketing channels.
You’re able to see a person’s entire journey with your brand. For example, you can see when someone clicked on a link to your site on a social media platform, visited to your site, left, and then came back a week later to buy a t-shirt.
Analytics does this by letting you create special links to put on social media and other places that aren’t your site. Those links track when people click on them, so you can see where your traffic is coming from.
Kim might find out that her social media posts are driving a ton of people to her website, but her search ads aren’t getting clicked on much. She could then test out new search ads and see if the numbers improve.
Or maybe Kim discovers that a lot of people are putting shirts in their shopping cart, then leaving the site without buying. She could try simplifying her checkout process to see if that leads to more sales.
It’s easy to get started. Just go to marketingplatform. google.com and create an account. The set up can sound a bit technical, but we’ll walk you through it.
After making an account, go to the Admin button. Then, in the Property column, select Create New Property from the menu. Your Property is simply the name of the website or app you want to track. You can add up to 50 per account.
Select Website or Mobile App and enter your website’s or app’s name. If you want to track a website, enter your URL. You’ll be asked if your site uses http:// or https:// for its domain.
Next, you’ll be asked to choose an industry category (like plumbing or bakery) and the time zone you’re located in. Then click Get Tracking ID. You’ll put this ID into your website’s code so it will send info to Analytics.
Once you click Get Tracking ID your Property will be created, but you need to set up the tracking code on your website to start collecting data. Don’t worry – you don’t need to be a coding pro to set it up.
The tracking code is a piece of JavaScript that you’ll need to copy and paste into the code of your own web pages.
To get the code, go back to your Property in the Admin tab. If you have multiple different websites or apps you want to collect data for, you need to choose a specific one.
Under Property, you can click on Tracking Code to display your tracking ID at the top of the page. Copy this code and add it to each of your pages that you want to collect data from (preferably all the pages).
This process may differ based on the type of website you have (for example, static or dynamic).
LISTEN UP
Some web hosting services require only the tracking ID. With others, you need to add the longer “tracking ID code snippet” to each web page of the website you want to track. The tracking code snippet for your website will be displayed under Website Tracking.
It can take up to 24 hours for data to appear in your reports after you’ve set up your tracking code on your site.
When you start collecting data, you can see how well your marketing is working and use the insights to make strategic adjustments and improvements.
If you use Google Ads to advertise your business online, you can connect your account to Analytics to measure the effectiveness of your ad campaigns.
You can also set up goals by singling out the actions you want people on your site to take (like buying something or reading an article). Then you can see reports that tell you if you’re meeting your goals.
DO THIS NOW
Analytics can help you fine tune your website and digital marketing. To get you started, let’s make a checklist of steps you can take to put you and your site in a good position to use Analytics.
If you’re participating in the course, go to the next section to access your self assessment.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Web analytics helps you understand visitor behavior on your website and measure how effective your site and digital marketing campaigns are.
Google Analytics is a no charge tool that shows you data about your website and marketing channel.
Create an account or login at marketingplatform.google.com and follow the steps - making sure to add the tracking code to your site so you can see data in your reports.