How to set up Google Analytics on your website

— Published June 3rd, 2009  |  by Niamh Phelan

You can peruse reports on all kinds of user activity, such as:

• what countries your visitors come from
• what time of day your site is most visited
• what keywords people are using to get to your site

This type of Web Analytics data is an excellent means of getting to know your audience, and giving some context for their visits.

Tracking User Behaviour

You can go even farther with your data: Google Analytics can track your conversion funnels. That means noting visitor behaviour as they move from point a to point b on your site: from the 'product details' screen to the 'enter payment details' screen to the 'review' and finally (hopefully) to the 'thank you' screens. Only when they have gotten to the end, have they purchased your product.

Optimising such funnels has a direct impact on your bottom line. As you convert the low hanging fruit that users failed to check out because of usability impediments, more users can finish their tasks, which means more sales for your company.

Google Analytics made easy

I made a ten minute video called "How to set up Google Analytics on your site," in which I walk and talk you through setting up a Google Analytics Account.

All you need to do once you've set up your account is put Google Analytics tracking code onto your website.

1. Google will provide you with a tracking code (a few lines of code).
2. You copy and paste that code into the source code of every page of your site.

I explain this in detail in the video.

Google Analytics 101 and 202

This video will assist those attending the Analytics courses at our Boot Camp 2009, Europe's leading boutique Web conference. The video describes a basic implementation, so if your site includes sub-domains or spans multiple domains then we will need to do some extra work to set up the tracking. Please feel free to approach me at Boot Camp to discuss the best approach for your site. Web Analytics 101, hosted by Clodagh Kelly, takes place on June 9th. Web Analytics 202 takes place on June 11 and will be hosted by myself.

Web Analytics 101 will take you through the process of setting up Google Analytics on your website so you can collect accurate, actionable and useful data.

You'll get a solid grounding in the terminology of Web Analytics, learn how to understand and make use of key reports, and apply what you learn to your own site as you go. At the end of the workshop, you'll have a functioning Google Analytics installation and you will be armed with the tools you need to analyse your data, understand your visitors and improve your site.

Web Analytics 202 is intended to improve your analysis skills, so you get actionable insights from your data. You can use your increased insight to improve the design of your site and optimise the returns you get from your web traffic. The main focus of the workshop are goals and funnels, and you'll be taught how to identify the areas of your website that require improvement using funnels. I'll also teach you how to measure the impact of your changes, allowing you calculate the return on any investment in your site.

Why Analytics matters

It is critical to get to this stage with your analytics implementation. To make the most of any changes on your site, you need to be able to measure the impact of those changes. Otherwise, you'll never know if you are making your site worse or better.

Google Analytics will be the tool of choice at Boot Camp; however, the theory behind the tools is the same in most cases, so we can facilitate those using other tools. Ideally, you will have Google Analytics set up already when you attend our courses. That way you can view your own company data. But don't worry if you don't: you can use iQ Content's own account during the workshop.

Look forward to seeing you there.