Curious how people are finding your website? Do you know what they are doing once they get there? Is there content on your website that could be more engaging? Has something on your website stopped working? Adding tracking tools to your site is one of the best ways to help answer these questions as well as get powerful insights into the customer profile and journey. Google Analytics is just the tool to help you do all of this.
Why Google Analytics?
Google Analytics is a free web analytics tool that can be easily added to any site. It provides quick overview metrics as well as deep-dive insights on your website traffic, user behavior, and key business metrics to help you understand how customers interact with your site. Google Analytics is a powerful tool for marketers and business owners looking to optimize their digital presence and improve ROI.
Google Analytics Dashboards
At Rise, we use Google Analytics daily to monitor and analyze marketing data for our clients. It’s one of our favorite tools to use because it provides data-driven answers to questions about our marketing performance.
Google has also made things simple for small business owners by providing a variety of preconfigured dashboards that are useful for every-day reporting. This includes:
- Acquisition Reports
- User
- traffic
- Engagement reports
- Events
- Conversions
- Pages and Screens
- Landing Pages
- Monetization Reports
- Ecommerce
- Purchase/Checkout journey
- Transactions
- Retention reports
- User attributes
- Demographic details
- Audience segments
- Technology details
- Advertising reports
- Attribution paths
- Attribution models
- Key Events by channel
- Advertising Segments
Customized Google Analytics Reports
Once you’ve developed a good base understanding of your Google Analytics account, there are also customizable reporting options through the Exploration Reports which are perfect for in-depth analysis and data visualization. Exploration reports are particularly useful because they allow you to customize the dimensions, metrics, and filters to fit your use case, uncovering answers that may not be readily available in GA4’s standard reports.
Maybe you want to find patterns among your high-touch or repeat customers. You could create an exploration report to look at demographic or behavioral traits of users who complete purchases or fill out a lead form.
Perhaps you need to understand where users are dropping off in the sales process. You would be able to build a funnel exploration report to visualize the users progression through each step of the sales process and identify friction points.
Running multiple campaigns and need to assess which one drives the most engaged traffic? Build a campaign performance report that compares sessions by campaign parameters to see the winning metrics for engagement data points like average session duration and conversion rates.
All of the above scenarios and more are perfect use cases for Google’s customized reporting features.
Google Analytics Setup
But before you can drive into the data, let’s get your account setup and connected to your website or app.
Step 1: Create a Google Analytics account
- Go to analytics.google.com and create a new account
- Make sure you have an @gmail address for a FREE account
Step 2: Setup A New Property
- Go to “Admin” > “Create Property”.
- Enter details about the website or app name, time zone, and currency
Step 3: Configure Your Data Stream
- Select the appropriate data stream for your property (i.e. website, iOS or Android)
- For websites, you’ll enter your URL and name the stream
- Enable “Enhanced Measurement” to automatically track events such as page views, page scrolls, and file downloads
Step 4: Add the Google Analytics Tracking Code to Your Backend
- Depending on your backend, this may be as simple as copying and pasting the Measurement ID (e.g. G-XXXXXXXXXX) or installing the tag manually after the <head> element on every page of your site
- This is the most important step because it’s how Google Analytics talks to your site!
Step 5: Verify Data Collection
- It might take a few hours, but once the connection is made, you’ll see data in the “Realtime Report” section of Google Analytics.
If you made it this far, you’ll be on your way from zero to data-hero in no time. But don’t stop there! In order to get the most out of Google Analytics, you’ll want to set up tracking for key actions a user could take on your site. Specifically, actions that lead to your business goals and drive revenue. For instance, if leads are your primary goal, you’ll want to track actions such as form submissions or phone calls. If you’re an e-commerce business, you’ll want to track actions such as add to carts, checkouts started, and purchase confirmations.
Below are steps for setting up events, but in most cases you’ll want to hire a web developer or tracking specialist to help you implement and test — especially if you want to add custom tracking parameters.
Step 6: Set Up Your Events
- Go to Admin > Events > Create Event to setup specific actions
- Common Events:
- Button Clicks
- Video Interactions
- Form Submissions
- Downloads
- Purchases
- Common Events:
- Click Create and enter:
- Event Name
- Matching Conditions to trigger the event
- Event Parameters (e.g. button text or page title)
- Save and test
Step 7: Define Your Conversions
- Go to Admin > Events
- Mark key events as conversion (e.g. purchase or form_submit)
- Conversions should be tied to your business goals; not all tracked events should count as conversion! This should be reserved for your top business goals.
Conclusion
Google Analytics is one of the best free tools you have at your disposal to analyze and optimize your website. It will help you make data-driven decisions to improve your business goals. Interested in learning more or getting started? Rise can help! Contact us to set up a call to discuss your needs.
