The first thing you need to do is create a Google Analytics account. This can be done at http://www.google.com/analytics. You will sign in with a Google account, so if you don't have a Google account, you will need to create one.
You will now type in the information for your Website and give the account a name. Typically we name the accounts with the name of the Website.
Click "continue" and enter in contact information.
Finally click "continue" and create the new account.
Step 2:Create your Profile
Go to the "Website Profiles" tab and click "edit" next to your profile. This takes you to the "Profile Settings" page.
Now click edit in the Main Website Profile Information table.
You will set your Default page to the index /default page of your Website.
Exclude URL Query Parameters – here you can enter any query parameters you would like to exclude.
If you would like to enable e-commerce, select "yes".
Step 3:Add tracking code to your pages
*There are a few instances in which you would need to edit the tracking code first. These include: tracking multiple domains, tracking more than one sub domain and tracking multiple domain aliases.
The Google analytics tracking code needs to be added to all pages of your site that you would like to track.
The tracking code for your Website can be found in your Analytics account under "Analytics Settings"> "Edit" (this is next to the profile you are getting the code for).
Click "check status". This is in the upper right hand corner of the page.
Copy all of the tracking code.
For most Websites you will paste the tracking code on the bottom of each page, directly before the
tag. You can either use a common include or template to do this or manually add the code to each page.
*In some instances the tracking code will need to be placed in another area of the Website. These special cases include:
tracking e-commerce transactions
tracking across multiple domains or sub domains
pages with frames
sites with custom JavaScript functions
Google Analytics Reporting
When you go into your Google Analytics account, you will choose to "view report" for your profile. This will take you to your dashboard. You will find Report navigation, settings, and help resources all on the left side of the screen.
Date Range
Once you are in your reports you can change the date range of the reports to the specific dates you want to see. You can do this on the top right of the report screens. As shown by the yellow arrow.
This is very helpful for comparing month-to-month or week-to-week data etc.
Understanding Your Reports - The Basics
Dashboard
When you first login to your analytics reports, this is the first thing you will see. The dashboard gives you a basic summary of your results. You can click on the links in the side navigation to drill down to more detailed information.
You will be able to first see the total number of visits to your site on your dashboard. This number alone does not give you a lot of information because it includes organic search traffic, paid traffic, direct visitors who didn't use a search engine and more. To get full use of this number you need to compare it to other metrics as well as study visits over a time period to determine any trends.
Visitors Report
The visitors report allows you to analyze the visitors that went to your site. This report can tell you:
Percent of new visits (this can also be seen in traffic reports) or unique vs. non-unique visitors
How many pages are viewed each visit
Percent of new visits or unique vs. non-unique visits
This metric allows you to see overall visits to the site as well as unique visits to the site.
This is a basic metric that gives insight into whether you are getting unique visitors or repeat visitors.
This metric, like others, is to be used in combination with other metrics. This can be used to determine how many new visitors are coming to your site. On the other hand it also helps determine how many visitors are returning. There is a visitor loyalty link that allows you to go more in depth.
You can see how many times each visitor returns, how recently visitors returned for an additional visit, how many page views, and the length of visits.
If you have a high percent of new visits, you may want to think about making your site more engaging to help bring more visitors back. This metric should be compared with other metrics to determine a course of action.
If you have a low percent of new visits your visitors are showing loyalty by returning, but you may not be attracting new visitors. Comparing this metric with your overall traffic may offer valuable insight.
How many pages are viewed each visit
Knowing how many pages are viewed at each visit in combination with other metrics can also be a good analysis tool. This again does not apply in some cases including Blogs, as visitors commonly visit only one page.
If you see that a visitor did not spend a lot of time on the site, but has viewed many pages, it is possible that the visitor could not find what they were looking for.
If you notice that a visitor spent a good amount of time on the site and viewed only a few pages, it is possible that the visitor found what they were looking for quite easily and spent the time to get the information they wanted.
Traffic Report
One of the most basic and widely used metrics in Google Analytics Reports is the traffic report. The traffic report can tell you:
Where your traffic is coming from
Whether the traffic is "good" or qualified traffic.
Where your traffic is coming from
This is very valuable information. This metric can be drilled down to referring sources and can also be drilled down to analyze search engine traffic.
You can view whether your search traffic is paid, non-paid (organic) or both. This information can give you insight into any changes you need to make for both paid and organic programs.
You can also see what referring sites your traffic is coming from. This information can help you determine where to focus your efforts.
You can even drill down in the reports and view what keywords visitors are using to search to get to your site. For example, you can see which keywords are effective for you and which words you could capitalize on. You can also see which keywords are not working for you and adjust accordingly.
Whether traffic is "good" or qualified traffic.
Bounce rate is the percentage of visits to your site where the visitor leaves after viewing only one page. Bounce rate is a good indicator of qualified traffic except in a few cases like when your site is a Blog. In cases like this, it is very common for visitors to only view one page and leave. Regardless of how long they look at the page, the bounce rate would still be high.
You can look at the bounce rate of referring sites or keywords and determine whether the traffic coming from these sources is qualified traffic. A high bounce rate indicates that the site was not what the visitor was looking for. You may want to adjust your keywords or campaigns in this case.
What is considered a "high bounce rate" is determined on a site-to-site basis. It is important to understand your visitors and determine a benchmark bounce rate to go off of. It is important to assess the nature of your Website and whether it makes sense for users to visit more than one page or not.
Time on site can also be a good indicator of what traffic is qualified. If a visitor is not spending a lot of time on the site, it indicates that the visitor is not seeing what they are looking for. This is a good way to determine possible plans of action including:
Making your site more user-friendly, so it is easier for the visitor to find what they are looking for.
Making your site more appealing so the visitor spends more time on the site.
Goals
Setting up Goals is a great way to measure specific events that occur on your Website that indicate success. For example, the completion of a contact form, or the receipt page from a transaction, are both events that are worthy of being tracked.
Setting up Goals is easy and is a great way to measure success.
These can be combined with other metrics to aid in determining what on your site is prompting the goal completion. Perhaps most of the goals come from a certain page, or come from people who search a certain keyword.
Pages that do not perform may indicate that they need to be altered or optimized to better appeal to the visitor.
Keywords that do not perform indicate that they may not be relevant to the visitor. In this case, less time and resources should be used on these keywords.
Information for this document obtained from Google's Conversion University and the Google Analytics Installation Guide
