If you are a regular reader of my FAQs and Blogs you will know how keen I am for everyone to have some form of analytics on their website. Trying to effectively manage a marketing campaign with an online aspect without it is like trying to drive with your eyes closed.
I think Google Analytics is a great tool and it’s free! So if you haven’t already got it there are several ways to set up Google Analytics and which way you use will depend on the kind of website you have, but first things first you need to sign up for Google Analytics
Signing Up
So first of all pop along to Google Analytics – you can click here to get there. Now you will either need to sign in to Google or Sign Up to Google. Once you are signed in you will see this screen, so click ‘Sign up’
There is now a short form to fill out.
- Give the Account a Name, your business name would be perfect
- Now give the website a name, business name will be fine here too, unless your business has more than one website
- Enter the website address including the www.
- Select an industry category – don’t worry too much about this, it’s more for Google’s benefit than yours
- Change your reporting time zone to United Kingdom (v.important)
- Hit Get Tracking ID
Now on to the slightly more complicated bit
Websites with a built in CMS
Hopefully you know whether you have one of these, because you will have been using it to update your website on a regular basis. There are lots of Content Management Systems and many of them will have a specific area for Google Analytics Tracking Code. Your system should have some ‘Help’ to tell you how much of the code you need to insert. For some it is just the Tracking ID, which starts with the letters ‘UA’ for others you’ll need the whole thing from the ‘Global Site Tag’ to the ‘Script’ tag. Just copy and paste what you need from the Tracking Code Google gives after you sign up. See below for what the Tracking Code looks like.
WordPress Websites
Some WordPress Templates have specific areas for the code as detailed above, but if yours doesn’t you can download and install a Plugin called ‘Monster Insights’ when you Activate the plugin you sign in to your Google Analytics account select the website you want to track and it will link it all up for you. This will also mean you can access a certain amount of analytics data by logging into WordPress, rather than through Google Analytics directly.
Other Websites
If your website has been hand coded or is static you will need to ask your web developer to add the Tracking Code to your website. Send the whole thing to them in an email. They will probably want to charge you for adding it, but it only takes 5 minutes, so make sure they don’t want an arm and a leg for it. The Tracking Code looks like this (I’ve obscured the UA Code for security)
Of course if you have, or are planning to have an Inspiration Agency created website all this will be done for you and you don’t even have to worry about it! If you use us for ongoing SEO or social media we’ll even send you a quarterly statistics report!