You have a great new website for your business, up and running, and all that's left is to make the money, right? Before you start seeing cash, you'll need to make sure your page always has the traffic it needs. This is where Google Analytics comes into play. By placing the Google Analytics code on your site, you will be able to track how much traffic goes through your site. This will help ensure that visitors always have the best possible experience. To find out how to proceed, start by reading the first passage of the article.
Steps
Method 1 of 5: Part 1: Starting with a Google Analytics Account
Step 1. Visit the Google Analytics site
Click on the "Sign in to Analytics" button in the top right corner of the site. This will take you to a new page showing a brief summary of how Google Analytics works. Click the "Sign Up" button to create your Analytics account.
- You must log in with your Google account, if you have not already done so.
- You can create a new Google account specifically for Analytics data tracking if you want to keep it separate from your personal account.
Step 2. Choose the detection method
Google recently launched the beta version of Universal Analytics which you can choose to use instead of the classic program. Universal Analytics is not a full version yet, but it will provide more opportunities and flexibility in the future.
Several users report more accurate tracking using the Universal Analytics beta. Ultimately, the choice is up to you
Step 3. Enter your information into your account
In order to create your Analytics account, you will need to provide Google with some basic information. This will help determine how to interpret and manage the Analytics data you will read.
- Enter an account name.
- Enter your website name and URL in the "Manage your sites" section.
- Select the industry that best suits your site and select the time zone in which you want your tracking to take place.
Step 4. Select the data sharing options
There are three data sharing options that you can choose to turn on or off. These allow Analytics data to be shared with other Google programs, such as AdSense, with Google - anonymously for statistical reasons - and with specialists for troubleshooting and optimizing your Analytics account.
Method 2 of 5: Part 2: Enter the Tracking Code
Step 1. Click the "Get Tracking Code" button
This will take you to a page with a code snippet that you will need to insert into that of your web pages.
If you return to the Analytics site after creating your account, you will be able to access your code snippet by logging in, clicking the Admin button and then selecting your website. Click the "Tracking Information / Tracking Code" button to retrieve your custom lines of code
Step 2. Copy the code snippet to the clipboard
Make sure you copy everything between the two tags as well, including the tags themselves.
Make sure you don't change the lines of code, otherwise tracking won't work
Step 3. Open the source code of the web page
If you don't have access to your site's code, contact the web developer. You must be able to edit the code to insert the snippet.
If you are using a WordPress site, install the Google Analytics plugins for WordPress and paste the code into the Settings menu in the field for the plugin
Step 4. Paste the fragment
Look for the tag in the code. Copy the code immediately before the tag.
Enter the code on each page you want to keep track of. This means that all pages on your site should have this code snippet, not just the welcome page or the index
Step 5. Wait for the monitoring to start
Once you upload the changes to your code, detection will begin 24 hours later. You can check that the code has been entered correctly by accessing Analytics, clicking on the Admin button, selecting the "Tracking Code" tab and then looking for the "Tracking Status" item. You should read "Monitoring Installed".
Method 3 of 5: Part 3: Viewing Traffic
Step 1. Open the Admin section of the Analytics site
Your Account Home page will open. You will see a list of all properties that are tracked through Google Analytics.
Step 2. Select the All Accounts menu
From the menu, select View Visits to quickly see the number of visitors to each of your sites, as well as the percentage change from the previous month. This will allow you to see at a glance which of your pages needs work to increase traffic.
Step 3. Open the Panel
You can view the Dashboard for each of your monitored sites using the menu on the left side of the site. These panels allow you to see in-depth information about your site's traffic.
Step 4. Customize your Panels
Each panel is already configured with the basic widgets. You can customize them to better suit the needs of your site and your business. Click on the "+ Add Widget" button in the menu to add new widgets to the Panel. You can also remove any widgets that are already active.
Step 5. Create additional panels
You can insert a new panel to monitor specific aspects of a site. You can create up to 20 of them. To make a new one, click on the Panels menu and then click on "+ New Panel".
- The Start Panel contains all the basic widgets.
- The Blank Canvas does not contain any widgets.
Step 6. Use Filters to limit the traffic that is displayed
If a lot of traffic is coming from employees, you can use filters to hide the traffic they generate. Also you can use them to only show or hide traffic in a specific subdirectory.
Method 4 of 5: Part 4: Set Goals
Step 1. Go back to the "Admin" section of the website
Select the account you want to set goals for. It is located under the "Views" tab. By adding more sites to your account, in this area you will find yourself with a list of names.
Step 2. Click the Goals button in the left menu
Select "Create a Goal" to start defining a new goal for your view and then give it a name.
Make sure you check the "Activate" box to immediately start tracking the goal
Step 3. Choose the type of goal you want to create
There are templates available depending on the industry that was selected for your site when you created the tracking code.
- Choose “Destination” as your goal if you want to get a certain amount of visits to a specific URL.
- Choose "Pages per visit" or "Screens per visit" to specify a certain number of pages your users visit while on your site. Specify a "Condition" and a number of pages visited. These are sometimes called "Readers".
- Choose "Duration" to work on certain lengths of the visit. Fill in the time in minutes or seconds. Then enter the goal value. You can call these visitors "Engaged Users".
- Choose an "Event" objective for a "Call to Action", a call to action, such as buying a ticket or sending an invitation. You must return to fill in this goal after activating the Analytics Goal tracking feature.
- Choose "Sales" or another business goal to track how many people buy and what they choose to buy.
Step 4. Save your new goal
Select "Save" when you have specified all the details for your goal. You can create up to 20 goals per view.
Step 5. Read your Goal Flow Report
This report will give you insight into how visitors are reaching your goal. It can be found under Standard Tracking> Conversions / Outcomes> Goals.
You can see where visitors are being routed to your goal, where they leave if they leave your pages too soon, where traffic re-enters, and more
Method 5 of 5: Part 5: Enable Analytics Additional Features
Step 1. Track email, social media and other marketing campaigns with Google Analytics
Build a custom URL that tracks traffic for each new campaign.
- Go to the URL Builder to build your URL with the website, source, medium, term, name and content of the specific ad campaign. Use this custom URL on any online link. Google will track user information.
- Go to the "Campaigns" tab. Select "Traffic Sources" and go to "Sources" to analyze your specific campaigns for their success.
Step 2. Set up the accounts linked with Google AdWords
If you have a Pay Per Click (PPC) account, connect it to Google Analytics so you can track conversion rates and get detailed reports on each PPC ad.
Step 3. Use Event Monitoring
Similar to a URL characterized specifically for campaigns, it customizes the event links to track the origin and the percentage of conversion in ticket purchases.
