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Google Analytics is one of the many tools that Google provides to help people understand what visitors are doing on their website. The tool allows you to track and analyze critical data on your site and site visitors. The big question people ask, “Is Google Analytics Free?” — Yes, and it is one of the most popular free tools available.
Google Analytics is the premier analytics platform for tracking site or app performance. It is part of a range of tools provided by Google that include Google Search Console and Google Tag Manager.
The platform provides you with a full picture of how your site is performing. It collects a vast amount of data and processes it intelligently. It then generates reports to display that data to you. Those reports are what you can use to gain critical insight into your site and the people who visit it.
The first element of Google Analytics is data collection. The platform can gather a broad range of data about your site and how visitors use it. The exact nature of the data collected will be discussed in depth later. It includes, most notably:
Google Analytics uses a simple JavaScript code to gather all this data. You get that code when you set up Analytics for your website, as will be explained later. The code is added to every page and puts a cookie in the browser of each site visitor. The cookie then sends a hit to your Google Analytics that reports each interaction the user has with your site.
Google Analytics works with three different types of hits:
Google Analytics doesn’t present you with the raw data the platform collects. It first processes data and then generates reports. The first stage of data processing is the separation of data by users and sessions.
They will then be logged as a ‘returning’ visitor; this only works if they visit using the same device. The process can be subverted if they clear your cookie from their browser cache.
That session data includes the pages visited, actions taken, and time spent on your site. You can use this data to gain insights into site user behavior. It can be critical to understanding site performance, as we’ll talk about below.
Data Google Analytics processes are presented to you in the form of reports. These are visual representations of the data. They are designed to make it easy to ID patterns and gain insights. Visuals, after all, are known to be more effective at conveying complex ideas. The following, for instance, is a report showing the number of users a site gets over a period of time:
All reports on Google Analytics display a combination of Dimensions and Metrics. It is important to know what each of these is to understand what different reports tell you.
Google Analytics creates a range of default reports. We will look at many of them in-depth later. You can also create custom reports that combine different dimensions and metrics.
Not all dimensions and metrics can be combined into reports. They each have what is known as a ‘scope’ — that is the level at which their data is collected. The different scopes are ‘user-level,’ ‘session-level,’ and ‘hit-level.’ Only the dimensions and metrics of the same scope can be combined.
You can use Google Analytics for a range of different purposes. In the section below, we will quickly review three of the most common applications of Google Analytics.
The insights you can gain from Analytics reports can be vital to improving your marketing. Data collected can help you answer a range of questions about your marketing efforts:
The answers to those questions will help you better tailor your marketing efforts. They can show you the channels to invest in and those to move away from. They can also help you better define your target audience, amongst many other helpful insights.
Analytics reports are also the perfect place to learn about your site and those people who use it. In this area, the questions which the platform help you answer are even more plentiful:
Those kinds of insights give you practical ways forward for improving your site performance. Rather than a vague aim of improving traffic, you can have a more concrete objective. You might, for instance, learn that your blog posts get a lot of traffic — that could tell you that producing more and promoting them well could help boost traffic even further.
Google Analytics insights are also invaluable for informing your SEO. The platform helps answer an array of questions about how users find and interact with your site:
In SEO, as in many things, information is power. The more you know about your site visitors and your target audience, the better. Google Analytics is a platform that provides a plethora of data. Access and assess the right reports, and it can help boost the ROI you see from your SEO efforts.
Getting started with Analytics is nice and simple. You first need to set up a Google Account. If you already use Gmail, Google Drive, or other tools, you already have one. If not, it is easy to set one up. When you have got an account, log in to it, and you can get started setting up GA and adding Google Analytics to a website.
The above graphic is from the Google Analytics homepage. It shows you the easy three-step process for setting up the platform. When you are ready, click the signup button. That will take you to a page where you need to start providing information about yourself and what you will be using Analytics for:
This part of the process is no more complicated than following on-screen instructions. Once you have chosen an account name and made some basic choices, you then select what you want to measure.
The final step in the account setup process is to enter the exact details of the site you need to track. Once you have created your Analytics account, you will be able to add up to 50 different sites to track. For now, though, enter the URL you want to link to your account.
Clicking the create button will get your Analytics account up and running. It will also provide you with your tracking code for the site which you chose to track. That tracking code is what allows Google Analytics to collect data from visitors to your site. Your next job is to add the code to your site.
You need to add your tracking code to every page of your website. Or at least to every different type of page your site has. By adding the code to the header or footer, you can add the code to your whole site.
The tracking code needs to be added right after the < head > tag of your header file. If you have built your site using HTML files, that will mean adding the tag to those files. If you use a CMS like WordPress, you may also have the option to install Google Analytics via a plugin. If you search the WordPress plugins page for ‘Google Analytics,’ you will find a range of options (read the reviews before you choose). Then, all you need to do is to follow the instructions to install the plugin.
With your Google Analytics account set up and the tracking code added, you are ready to get started. Analytics will begin tracking data straight away. While you wait for site data to build up, there are a couple of other Analytics features that are worth setting up.
One of the many valuable yet straightforward features of Analytics is Site Search Tracking. This feature lets you collect and analyze data on how visitors use your site’s search function. Once set up, the feature can give you lots of handy information, including:
Getting site search setup is simple and shouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes. As a starting point, perform a search on your site. You should take note of the URL which gets generated. Then head to your Google Analytics account.
Open the Admin menu by clicking the cog symbol at the bottom left. Then choose the ‘View Settings’ alternative from the ‘View’ column at the right-hand side of the page; that will open a new menu. Scroll down it until you find a section titled ‘Site Search Settings.’
Toggle ‘Site Search Tracking’ to the on position. What you need to do next is to fill in the ‘Query Parameter’ field. That is where the search URL you generated earlier comes in. For example, maybe you entered ‘Google Analytics’ into your site search. If you did, the resulting URL might look like this:
www.website.co.uk/pages/search_results?s=googleanalytics
In the ‘Query Parameter,’ there is an ‘s.’ It’s what indicates the part of the URL which displays the search query. If that was the URL you generated, you would enter ‘s’ into the ‘Query Parameter’ field. Then, all you need do is click ‘Done,’ and the Analytics site search feature is set up.
Most websites exist with a specific objective in mind. It may be to get them to buy a product. Whatever your site’s goals, Google Analytics Goals provide a way for you to assess how well it fulfills them. That makes it another useful feature to get set up.
Your first stop is, once again, the Admin panel on Analytics. From there, select the ‘Goals’ option, as shown above. That opens a new page on which you should choose the ‘+ New Goal’ button. You can then decide whether to use an existing goal template or create a custom goal.
Goal templates will satisfy the needs of most site owners. They are designed to let you track all the common goals which sites have. If you wish to create a custom goal, it is pretty easy to do so.
First, name the goal. This name will appear on any reports which include data on the goal, so pick something obvious and memorable. You then need to choose one of the four different types of goals that Analytics allows for:
Every Analytics goal records a conversion when a site user performs a specific action. Which action that is, depends on the type of goal you choose.
Once you have chosen the type of goal you want to create, there are a couple of further steps. Google Analytics provides on-screen instructions. In general, you have to input the specific details of the goal you want to track. For instance, for a destination goal, you need to provide the URL to which a visit will trigger a conversion:
Duration and Pages per Session goals are simple to set up. There are just a few fields to fill in with information about the exact nature of the goals. Event goals are a little different. To set them up, you have to first set up ‘Events’ through Analytics. Google provides a comprehensive guide to doing so.
With events set up, things are once again simple. Choose the event you want a goal to refer to and then fill in the other simple fields shown above. Whichever type of goal you’ve set up, clicking on the ‘Create Goal’ button completes the process. Data related to the goal will then start being collected by Analytics.
One final thing you may wish to know before getting stuck into the Analytics reports is how to add a new account or property. To do this, head to the main Admin menu on Google Analytics.
Two of the three blue buttons displayed there are ‘Create Account’ and ‘Create Property.’ Choose whichever is relevant to what you wish to do. You’ll then be taken step-by-step through the process of setting up a new account or new property to track.
Once you’ve got Analytics and its features set up, you can sit back and relax. After 24 hours, the platform should have collected enough data for you to view your first reports.
You can access these reports through the Google Analytics dashboard. The home page of that dashboard is shown above and is also known as the Overview dashboard. It’s where each of your visits to Analytics begins. On that page, you’ll find everything you need to navigate through the platform.
You can find links to specific Analytics reports down the left side of the dashboard. We’ll talk about each of the main types of reports in detail later. The right-hand side of the overview dashboard has the first insights into your site data.
Graphs, tables, and other representations of your data are displayed on ‘cards.’ They’re the panels on that right-hand portion of the home page. There are simple options attached to the cards to alter what they show. Typically, you can change the type of data displayed and the time period for which it’s displayed.
You will also often be able to click a link to head to the full report from which the snapshot has been taken. The format of those reports is the same as the homepage. They have cards with tables and graphs, which you can edit to show different information as you see fit.
There are five main categories of a report. Each category has a dashboard. You can access them by clicking the relevant link down the left-hand menu of Analytics. Each one provides you with a range of different reports.
The Real-Time dashboard is the first option on the left-hand menu. It looks similar to the main overview dashboard. The difference is it only displays real-time data visualizations of users currently exploring your site.
The Real-Time reports update as Analytics receives new hits. The dashboard shows how users are consuming content and provides insights into users. For instance, click the ‘Locations’ option, and you’ll see where current site users are based.
The Audience dashboard is where you go to learn more about your site’s users. Not just those who are on the site now, but all of them. Open up the overview part of the dashboard, and you get a broad view of the data Analytics makes available to you.
For your chosen time period, you can see how many users and sessions your site has had. You can also view things like how long users stay on your website and how many pages they typically visit. Choosing any of the other reports in the Audience dashboard lets you dig deeper into the user data.
For example, you might choose to visit the Demographics section, as shown above. That report shows you how your site’s audience splits by age and gender. That can be crucial information for a marketing campaign.
The Audience dashboard tells you things about your site’s users. The Acquisitions dashboard gives you insight into how those users found your site. Once again, this part of Analytics begins with an overview report.
That report displays several dimensions and metrics. The metrics and dimensions are split into three categories; ‘acquisition,’ ‘behavior,’ and ‘conversions.’ ‘Acquisition’ information tells you about the users your site gets from different channels. ‘Behavior’ metrics report on what those users do, while ‘Conversions’ data displays how users from different channels convert.
The other reports in the Acquisitions dashboard let you dissect your data in a range of ways. ‘All Traffic’ is where you’ll find more in-depth reports into the data displayed on the overview report.
Other options, meanwhile, look specifically at individual acquisition channels. The ‘Search Console’ reports, for example, let you view how users reach your site via organic search. You can find out things like how many users access your site from Google and which search queries they use.
Some of the reports we’ve already mentioned include data on how users interact with your site. The Behavior dashboard is where you go for more comprehensive data in that regard. The overview report shows you information on page views, session duration, and bounce rate, among other details of user behavior.
The Behavior reports are particularly useful for assessing the performance of different pages on your site. The ‘Site Content’ Report is great for this.
This report displays a wide array of metrics related to the different pages of your site. They include things like page views, average time on page, and bounce rate. These metrics can be really useful. They tell you how popular your pages are.
You can see which get the most views and which keep users’ attention the longest. Those insights tell you what type of content you should focus on producing in the future. They also reveal if you need to improve or even delete some existing pages.
The last of the main Analytics dashboards is the Conversion dashboard. This part of the platform shows how visitors ‘convert’ when using your site. That means how often they perform the actions you want them to on your site. As such, this dashboard is linked to the goals which you learned how to set up earlier.
‘Goals’ is the main section of this dashboard. It’s here that you find reports into conversions for the different goals you may have configured. As standard, the overview report shows you total goal completions for your site as well as how they split between different goals.
You can also edit the overview report to focus on any one of your goals, via the dropdown menu shown below:
Using the dashboards described above can help you get a good handle on many aspects of your site. It can help you smarten up your content and sharpen your marketing, alongside making many other improvements. Getting a proper handle on your competitors is something else that can help you do that.
Other areas of the tool are equally helpful. You can check out how much overlap there is in your site’s audience and that of your rivals. You can even get a detailed view of where a competitor’s traffic is coming from. Alongside what Google Analytics tells you about your site, these details can truly help you move your firm forward.
You’re now ready to start tracking your site data with Google Analytics. You know what the platform’s all about and how to get it set up. You should also have a good idea about the different ways you can use it to help your site. From tweaking marketing campaigns to improving site content, Analytics can help you in many different areas.
What makes the platform so useful is that it delivers tangible data. You can get data on your site and your users. This data provides you with concrete insights you can use to develop your business further. Now that you’re up to speed with Google Analytics, those insights are at your fingertips.