Hooray! You’ve launched your new website. It’s responsive, full of information and sure to boost those sales numbers. Right? Of course. Well, maybe. How can you tell? The only way to determine how well your site is doing is to track how people are using it. You need answers to important questions like how many people are visiting your page each day. What are they searching for and how long do they spend on your site? Are they finding the answers they seek? These are all valuable questions, and the answers will help you maintain a relevant, successful website. But how do you answer all these questions? We’re glad you asked. The answer, is of course, by setting up your Google Analytics account.
Analytics provides an endless source of data and insights into user engagement. However, you’ll only get the benefits once it’s set up. This first step can seem a daunting task if you’re new to the world of digital marketing. Never fear. Brand Candy is here to show you the way.
Setting up your Google Analytics account
To begin, head over to the Google Marketing homepage. Here you’ll find a link to set up your free Analytics account. Once you’ve signed in with a new or existing Google login, you’re ready to begin setting up your Google Analytics account.
The first step is to define the criteria for your account. The Google Analytics structure recognises an account as the highest level of your organisation. Within an account, you can set up multiple properties, each representing a single website. As a business, your Account Name should be your brand as this allows you to include all the sites relating to your company under one account.
Once you’ve named your account, you can set up your property, which is basically your website. You will need to provide the website URL, use the dropdown to specify if the site is on a non-secure (HTTP://) or secure (HTTPS://) protocol. Within each property, you can filter the way you monitor traffic on your website using various views. These can look at your site as a whole or target specific pages or information. For instance, you can focus on traffic by region.
After naming your property, use the Industry Category drop-down to specify what niche your site fits in. And finally, define your time zone – hour and day affect how data is analysed.
Adding your tracking code
Once the preliminary details have been entered, select “Get Tracking ID” and accept the service agreement – a property overview will come up with a Tracking ID. This tracking code needs to be added to your website. If you’re a whizz at web development and have access to your website’s source code, add this little snippet of code under “Website Tracking”. Alternatively, you can copy the code and send it to your web developer (hint: that’s Brand Candy for most of you reading this) and let them implement the change.
For a website running on WordPress, you can install a free Google Analytics for WordPress plugin. This plugin allows you to view key Analytics stats in your WordPress install.
Verifying the traffic to your website
Now that your tracking ID is in place, you’ll want to double check that Google Analytics is capturing data and showing traffic from the website. Open your site in your web browser and then go to the Real-Time section of Analytics. If you’ve inserted the code correctly, visits to the site will appear here.
Sharing access with team members
After your Google Analytics account is up and running, you can share it with any team members needing access to the data. Under User Management, in the Admin section of analytics, you can share access by entering the email address of the person you would like to add. This address will need to be attached to a Google account.
Users can be assigned different levels of access. If a person only needs access to the data to look at without editing, you can give them access to “Read & Analyze”. Agencies setting up goal tracking and AdWords can have an “Edit” level access, while “Manage Users” should be limited to trusted individuals.
Set up conversion tracking
So, Google Analytics is monitoring traffic to your website, but what about your business performance? Yes. You can track this too. Google Analytics Goals allows you to set up conversion tracking to observe product sales or lead form submissions. This is a handy way to measure return on investment for your various campaigns.
Does a “Thank You” page pop up after a visitor submits a form or completes a purchase? Use that URL to set up a goal to track visits as conversions. If your website uses Gravity Forms, you can set up Goal tracking for form submissions using the Gravity Forms Event plugin. MediaRon provides a detailed walkthrough on setting up tracking goals.
With your Google Analytics account configured correctly, you’re able to obtain a clear picture of how people interact with your brand online. This information is invaluable when it comes to developing an effective digital marketing strategy. If you’re looking for a hands free solution, Brand Candy offers digital marketing strategies tailored to your brand. Give us a call or fill in our quote form and we’ll get back to you ASAP.
