How to set up Google Analytics?
At some point in almost every website owner’s journey, he or she would inevitably think, “I wonder if anyone/how many people have visited my website?”. Thankfully, the answer is easy to find. While there are many tools that take different approaches to analytics, by far the most popular of which is Google Analytics. This owes to the fact that their free product is very robust. It also helps that they are Google.
To some checking your site data might seem vain, but there is a lot of merit and of actionable insight you can glean from analytics. Here is what this two-part series on analytics will cover. The first post will focus on how you can get Google Analytics installed on your website. The second will look at how to get actual insights and not be bogged down by vanity metrics. And so off we go!
Installing Google Analytics
Getting a tracking code
- Go to Google Analytics and sign in using your Google Account (you’ll need an account if you don’t already have one)
- In Google Analytics, click on admin and create new account
- Follow the instructions to fill in the required details and click ‘Get Tracking ID’
- Accept the Terms & Conditions
- Your tracking code should be ready and on the page
Implementing the tracking code in Website Builder
- Go into Website Builder from your control panel
- Select edit template, and click on Components
- Double click the Code component
- Fill in the following details
- Title the code ‘Google Analytics’ for later reference
- For placement, select ‘Just before closing </head> tag (fixed)’
- Copy & Paste the script code from Google analytics into the code box
- It should look like this:
- Save and publish your site and you’re good to go!
Congratulations! You can now access analytics from the Google Analytics page.
Getting actionable insights with Google Analytics
How many people are visiting my website each month?
Knowing the top line number of visitors is a conversation opener for a number of things. Maybe you would like to earn money through advertising, approach someone for an interview or request for a guest post. This allows everyone to have a working estimate to calculate the payoff instead of taking a stab in the dark.
How can you track this statistic?
The main Audience Overview section gives you a good selection of numbers around this. By setting the time period in the top right corner, you are able to slice the data as thinly as you’d like. Here’s what the numbers mean.
Users: The unique number of people who came to your site over the period
Sessions: The number of times someone visited your site
Pageviews: The total number of pages everyone coming to your site saw
Bounce Rate: the percentage of people leaving your site after looking at just one page
How are people coming to your website?
If you would like to grow your traffic, this is one of the most important metrics to track. By knowing how your audience finds your site allows you to make strategic decisions. If search gives you a good amount of traffic each month, you may want to pour more resource into a good SEO campaign or if your social media outreach program isn’t giving you the traffic you thought you would get, it might be worth taking another path.
How can you track this statistic?
On the left navigation column, you can find this metric under ‘Aquisition/All Traffic/Channels’, giving you a breakdown of the main sources of traffic. For an even more granular view, you click on Source/Medium – it breaks the numbers down by website.
What is the most popular content on my website?
Knowing this metric allows you to spot patterns in what kinds of content would be popular among your audience. For example, if step-by-step guides are frequently more popular, you could consider putting more resource into making the content more robust, giving your audience much more value from these articles. You could also tweak the editorial calendar so that you give your audience more of what they want.
How can you track this statistic?
In the navigation bar, go to Behavior/Site Content/All Pages. This gives a list of the most popular content sorted by a variety of parameters.
How much should I focus on the mobile version of my website?
In recent years, responsive design has become a mainstay (and minimum requirement) for web design. While your site may work on both desktop and mobile, there are cool features that take a bit more time to implement on mobile, such as directly calling a phone number, or sending an address to your maps app. If you knew that more than 50% of your traffic is from mobile devices, wouldn’t it make sense for you to create a mobile site first, and then adapt it to the larger screen, rather than vice versa?
How can you track this statistic?
In the navigation bar, go to Audience/Mobile/Overview. This gives a breakdown of device type – this should give you enough information to come to a decision.