A Step-by-Step Guide On How to Setup Google Analytics For Website

3679

22 Apr, 2024

how-to-set-up-google-analytics-for-website

Introduction

Can you evaluate a student’s academic or extra co-curricular activities progress without having any record of his/her performance or report card? Sounds absurd, right? 

That’s how we feel when we come across businesses who are still not using Google Analytics (or any analytics for that matter) to measure their website’s traffic. Why? We’ve no clue. But we’re hoping you’re not one of those. If you’re then we’re not going to reprimand you but insist that you read this blog. In this blog, we take a look at Google Analytics from the beginner's point of view and discuss what it is, why you need it, and most importantly how to set up Google Analytics for a website. 

We present you a simple beginners guide to introduce Google Analytics to you and tell you how to Setup Google Analytics and install it on a website in just 5 easy steps. By the end of this guide, you’ll know:

  1. What is Google Analytics? Why is it important?
  2. Key Google Analytics Terms You May Come Across While Navigating Through It!
  3. How to Link Google Ads with Google Analytics?
  4. Some tips to use Google Analytics like a pro, and
  5. By the end of this blog, we ensure you that you’ll know how to set up Google Analytics for website and you will be able to use it to see things like:
    • How many people are visiting your website
    • If visitors are coming from Google, Facebook or other site
    • Which pages of your website are getting the most views, and more

Ready? Let’s get started!

Want to Set-up Your Google Analytics to Your Business Website?

  • Check Real Time Analytics
  • Analyze Customer Engagement
  • Check Geographical Analytics of Users

An Overview Of Google Analytics: What Is It? What Does It Do?

According to Google Analytics, “it gives you free tools that you need to analyze data to track and evaluate the performance of your website, marketing, content, products, and more in one place, so you can make smarter decisions for your business".

Google Analytics’ free service also lets you sort and sift site analytics into different data dimensions and metrics to know:

  • Which pages do they visit on your website?
  • How long did they view the page?
  • The browser your visitors are using
  • If they’re on a desktop or mobile device?
  • What site were they on when they clicked over to yours?
  • Which forms the user-submitted?
  • How many users are currently on your site?

What Does it Do and How?

Google Analytics collects a wide range of data by inserting a code snippet into the header of each of your site's pages. So Google Analytics gatherers information in five categories, namely:

  • Realtime: Shows what's going on on your site at the time you're looking at the report.
  • Audience: Information about who is viewing your site, including demographics, is included in the audience section.
  • Acquisition: Describes how your website gets visitors.
  • Behavior: Displays what your visitors do on your site, such as button clicks and the most popular pages.
  • Conversions: An advanced report that works with Google Analytics Goals to measure activity like email list subscriptions and e-commerce sales.

The Following Are Some Instances Of Specific Data You Could Encounter in Your Google Analytics Reports:

  • At any given time, the number of active users on your site.
  • Over time, how many people visit your site?
  • The ages, genders, and locations of your visitors.
  • From whence do your visitors come? (e.g., organic search, social media, etc.).
  • What pages do visitors look at and how long do they stay on them?
  • Some other parameters such as Bounce Rates, Click-through rates and conversion rates. 

Some Of The Advantages of Utilizing Google Analytics

Before we jump to how to setup Google Analytics for website, do we see you wondering if setting up Google Analytics for a website is worth it or not? Then read what an amazing asset is Google Analytics for your website:

  • Identify Traffic Sources: You may learn about your visitors' origins, the channels they use (search, social, paid, etc. ), the country they are from, and more.

  • Improve Your Audience Understanding: What happens when someone visits your website? You can track every activity with Google Analytics, including which links they click and which files they download.

  • Create Popular Content: Google Analytics allows you to track your pages and posts so you can see which content is popular. You'll be able to identify similar topics to cover and increase your traffic this way.

  • Conversions and Sales: If you run an online store, Google Analytics can help you track conversions and figure out how much money you're generating.

  • Improve the User Experience of Your Website: Learn how visitors interact with your site, which pages they visit, and which device or browser they use to improve the user experience of your website.

So now let’s move on to how to add Google Analytics to websites!

How To Setup Google Analytics For Website In 5 Simple Steps

Now you know what Google Analytics is and why it is important for your business, so next, you should know how to add Google Analytics to websites. Adding Google analytics to websites can be tricky. However, once you have it set up, you get to access a wealth of insights into your website’s visitors and its performance. You’ll need to sign up for a Google Analytics account before learning how to use it and installing it on your website. 

To learn how follow the steps below:

  1. Go To The Google Analytics Website
  2. Click the Setup for Free Button
  3. Enter All The Details Of Your Account
  4. Enter the details of your Website 
  5. Copy The Tracking Code For The Google Analytics

Let’s know how to add google analytics to the website in detail

Step 1: Go To The Google Analytics Website

For adding google analytics to website, you should open the home page, where you will find a pop-up asking you to sign up. In order to sign up, you can use your already existing credentials of the Google Account or even go for creating a new google account and then use the details to sign up: 

Step 2: Click the Setup for Free Button

In the next screen, you’ll know everything about what Google Analytics is and how it can help your business. To get started with Setting Up Google Analytics, you should click on “Start Measuring.”

Step 3: Enter All The Details Of Your Account

On the next screen, you'll be prompted to give your account a name and select your Account Data Sharing Settings. Click Next after selecting your preferred options.

On the next screen, you have the choice to choose between adding a…

  • Website
  • App
  • App and website

Choose the Website option and click “Next.”

Step 4: Enter the details of your Website

The next screen is where you may fill up the specifics for your sites, such as the name, URL, and other information. In Google's analytics dashboard, you may track many websites and give each one a unique name.

  • Then type in the URL, industry, and timezone for your website. You can also inform Google about how you plan to use analytics in your company. For instance, "to improve the experience of my app or website."
  • Click “Create” when you're finished.
  • Following that, you must accept and agree to Google's terms and conditions. So, to continue, click “I Accept.”

Step 5: Copy The Tracking Code For The Google Analytics

You'll then see a screen with your Google Analytics Tracking ID and Google Analytics tracking code. Copy your tracking code because, depending on whatever method you select below, you'll need to paste it into your website.

It's a good idea to bookmark this page in your browser since you'll need it once you've put the Google Analytics code on your website.

Viola, You Succeeded in Adding Google Analytics to Website!

How to Link Google Ads with Google Analytics?

Do you know it’s quite easy to link your Google Ads account with your Google Analytics account? You may ask why? According to Google, when link Google Ads to your Google Analytics account you can view  “the full customer cycle, from how they interact with your marketer (e.g. seeing ad impressions, clicking ads) to how they finally complete the goals you’ve set for them on your site (e.g. making purchases, consuming content).”

So to get greater and deeper access to the information you need to determine your ad campaign’s ROI or to track your SEO efforts with Google Analytics.To link the two accounts, follow the seven steps below:

  1. Click on the gear icon in the lower left hand corner to go to the Admin dashboard
  2. In the “Property” column, click on Google Ads Linking
  3. Click on New Link Group
  4. Click on the Google Ads accounts you want to link with Google Analytics
  5. Click Continue
  6. Make sure that linking is on for each property you want to see data from Google Ads
  7. Click Link accounts

Let’s Know The Key Google Analytics Terms You May Come Across While Navigating It!

You already know what Google Analytics is, what it does, why it is important for your business and also learned how to add Google Analytics to website but it is a vast matrix with so many components that you may feel overwhelmed with so many terminologies. But relax, here we have compiled the list and simple explanations of a few key terms that you may come across while using Google Analytics and if you already know them then there’s no harm in a little revision, right? Here are they: 

  • Traffic: It helps you know how many people visit your website over a defined period of time.
  • Traffic Source: When you use different means or one medium to drive more traffic to your websites. The source can through Paid search advertising, social media marketing, and even email marketing.
  • Bounce Rate: when a user lands on your site page but exits without placing another request to the Google Analytics server. “Another request” refers to exploring other pages on the same site or taking any other action like clicking on a call-to-action to enter or continue through a sales funnel.
  • Conversion: when a user’s activity fulfils the intended web page purpose, it can be buying a product or service, downloading any content or a newsletter subscription etc.
  • Entrances: the number of times visitors entered your site via a specific page or set of pages.
  • Entry/Landing Page: the entry page is the first page viewed by any visitor on a website.  
  • Exit Point: the exit point is the last page viewed by any visitor on a website.
  • Page Impression: a page is loaded or reloaded by a user.
  • Sessions: the activity by a unique user within a given time frame on your website Google Analytics defaults that time frame to 30 minutes.
  • Visits: the total number of visits to your site, from unique or repeat visitors.
  • Unique Visitors: the number of unduplicated visitors to your website over the course of a specified time period.
  • User Behavior Flow: This helps you trace how a user flows within your site and tracks right from the pages he/she enters to the pages he/she visits last before exiting or leaving everything in between.
  • Google Analytics Goal: When you set a Goal, you basically tell Google Analytics to keep track of what’s critical to your business– traffic, conversion rate or page views etc.

4 Amazing Tips to Maximize Google Analytics For Your Website

Now we’re done with how to add Google Analytics to website, you should also know few tips that if you follow diligently not only you will get to know how your website is performing but you can also do more with your Google Analytics for website and boost your conversion and revenue, these are:

  1. Use Custom Segments To Classify Your Visitors:  Try using Audience Data such as age, gender, and location when you want to create custom visitor segments to know how a particular visitor is engaging with your website.
  2. Integrate Google Analytics w/ Your Testing Tool: You A/B tests can do more than collecting feedback on your website performance if you integrate it with Google Analytics. Doing so allows you to view user behaviour at a more microscopic level and make more nuanced business decisions.
  3. Setup Google Analytics Custom Alerts: Doing so will help you proactively monitor your Google Analytics data and let you know if there’s any change, loss or any other red flags in your data such as overall site performance, user behaviour or search performance.
  4. Conduct a Campaign Tracking Audit: This is one of the crucial activities that you need to perform so as to know which channels or practices are bringing in results and which are not. There are 5 UTM tags that are used by Google Analytics: Medium, Source, Campaign, Content and Term.

    Final Thoughts On How to Setup Google Analytics for Website

    You can’t run a website or app without knowing how it is working for you or is it even driving the kind of traffic you expect from your digital marketing campaigns. Google Analytics for websites not only offers you information into the performance of your site but it also helps you gain more advanced insight that helps you improve your site and thereby increasing the conversion and the profits. Using Google Analytics for a website may seem a complex procedure but with the help of right and adept professionals you can manage it like a pro, moreover you can ace your marketing performances as well.

    In this blog, we shared detailed insight into what Google Analytics is, why you need it and shared easy-to-follow steps to know how to set up Google Analytics for website. Additionally, we also discussed a few of the common Google Analytics terminologies that you should know to work with and also give a brief trick to get most out of your Google Analytics for website.

    Drop us a comment if you're a beginner who has a burning question about Google Analytics for website or how to set up Google Analytics for website, we will be happy to help!

    8
    Leave a Reply

    avatar
    8 Comment threads
    0 Thread replies
    0 Followers
     
    Most reacted comment
    Hottest comment thread
    3 Comment authors
    Lane ClarkFinley EdwardsRafael LewisTobias ScottAndrew Taylor Recent comment authors
      Subscribe  
    newest oldest most voted
    Notify of

    A

    Arlo Hill

    Awesome guide on analytics setup.

    P

    Paxton Harris

    Too informative, really helped me in setting up an analytics account.

    O

    Orion Kelly

    Earlier I thought, I have to reach out to any digital agency for analytics setup and handling but after reading this post I thought I can do it myself.

    A

    Andrew Taylor

    Listed advanced tips are amazing. Thanks!

    T

    Tobias Scott

    Is it free of cost to set up a google analytics account.

    R

    Rafael Lewis

    Hi! I have gone through your blog, it’s interesting but I want to explore more about Google Analytics to get the perfect results. Can you provide me with more links?

    F

    Finley Edwards

    How much does it cost to hire a professional to maintain a google analytics account for any business? Can you tell?

    L

    Lane Clark

    Hi! I am a graduate student and want to pursue a google analytics course from your institute. Can your team help me with this?


    Get a Quote