What is Google Analytics?
Most online businesses require a good deal of digital marketing for broadening their reach and attracting potential customers. A business spends good amount of money on various SEO and digital marketing campaigns for this purpose. It then becomes essential to assess how these campaigns and tools are faring. Web Analytics tools are used to help you analyze your website traffic and track various other data. Google Analytics is one such web analytics tool offered by Google which can be used free of cost. It is used to track and report the traffic on your website.
Steps How to Set up Google Analytics
1. Sign up for a Google Account
You need to sign up on Google and create a Google Account. It is recommended that you do not use your personal Google account and create something like [email protected] that works specifically for your business. If you already have a Google account for your business, you can directly proceed to the next step.
2. Sign up for Google Analytics
Once your Google account is set up, you next step is to use your Google account to sign up for Google Analytics using www.google.com/analytics. Give your account a name, preferably your business name. Paste the URL of the website you need to track and give it a name. Choose an appropriate category for your website like healthcare, sports etc. Pick your time zone. Select the data you are willing to share with Google. If sufficient information is shared, they can give you a detailed report of your traffic data. At the bottom, click on “Get Tracking ID” and agree to their terms of service.
3. Use your website tracking code and start tracking
Once the tracking code for your website provided by them, you need to use this to enable the tracking. This code will have to be inserted in every page of your website. It is recommended that you add it to the header of your web-page. If you lose your tracking code, you can find it at any point by following this path – Admin> Property>Tracking info.
4. Wait to see the Google analytics data
Once you are done with the above steps, Google will start recording all the activity on your website and creating analytical data for you. It might take up-to 24 hours for the data to start reflecting your Analytics account.
Difference Between Google Analytics and Google Tag manager
Google Tag Manager is a tag management tool whereas Google Analytics is a wholesome analytics tool. These are two very different tools which work great together. Google Analytics is a reporting and analysis tool. Google Tag Manager is a GUI driven tech tool especially meant for non-developers.
Google Tag Manager acts as a container script which needs to be added to your website just once. Any further modifications for tracking can be done by editing the code within the Google Tag Manager without disturbing the website code. It simplifies the optimization process in this manner. It is just a way to embed the tracking code in your website. But unless you add the Google Analytics id in its configuration, it cannot track or collect any data.
Linking Google Analytics and Google Search Console
Google Search Console serves as a tool for webmasters to succeed in creating better search results for their website. The Search Console tools and reports help in monitoring your website’s performance, impressions, clicks, ranking and traffic. It also helps fix issues on your website. It helps you understand what queries bring users to your website.
1. Open your Google Analytics account
2. Click on “Acquisition” on the left sidebar and then click on “Search Console”
3. Click on the button which says “Set up Search Console Data Sharing”.
4. Choose your Search Console account and configure it.
Now you don’t need to separately manage your Google Search console. With this integration, you can see the data from GSO inside the GA interface itself.
Setting up Goals in Google Analytics
It is very important to acquaint yourself on how to create and monitor conversion goals if you want to reap maximum benefits of Google Analytics. For example: You can create a goal to track an ongoing marketing campaign.
1. Open your Google Analytics account and go to Google Analytics Standard Report
2. Click on the “Admin” button located in the top bar. This will navigate you to a page with 3 columns: “Account”, “Property” and “View”.
3. Under the “View” column you will see a heading as “Goals”. Click on the “Goals” button.
4. You will be navigated to a new page. There, click on “+Goal” to set up a new goal. Select the “Custom” button and click on “Continue”.
5. Enter the Goal Description. Give it a relatable name. Select “Destination” as the type. Click on “Continue”.
6. Enter the Goal Details by entering the URL to a thank you page, which the user will see once they have subscribed to your service.
7. You can also use the “Value” button to enter monetary values for each conversion. Click on “Save” and your Goal is created.
8. As soon as your Goals get created, Google Analytics will start recording your data. You can view this data by following this path Acquisition>Overview>Conversion
This data will help you understand which channel is bringing you maximum traffic and giving you highest conversion rates. You can then decide which channel you should focus on for best results.
How to Enable eCommerce Tracking?
It can be immensely helpful to enable eCommerce tracking in your Google Analytics account if you have an eCommerce website. It can be used track the transactions on your website and get detailed analytical data about your traffic sources.
1. Open your Google Analytics account
2. Click on the “Admin” button located on the top right corner
3. Choose “E commerce setting”
4. Turn the “Enable eCommerce” toggle switch to ON. This will enable basic tracking for your website.
Google Analytics can provide very useful insights on marketing campaigns in real time as well as past data. It can be easily integrated with several other tools. It can provide precious insights about customer behavior, their pattern and their country or city. All these details help a business understand consumer behavior and serve the consumer in an efficient manner.
Although Google Analytics is the most popular web analytics software which is freely available, its importance is often undermined by most businesses. More often than not, it is underutilized and not used up to its full capacity. Proper utilization of Google Analytics and its data can help your business grow leaps and bounds.
