Signing Up For Google Analytics
Now that Google has opened its analytics software to everyone, it’s not only worth considering using it – but you could be missing out on a vital tool if you don’t.
Google Analytics was born when Google purchased Urchin, quickly improved it and then released it completely free. The software allows your organization to monitor what pages of your site are the most popular, how many people are visiting your site, when they’re visiting and from where, and all kinds of other information that can help you improve your overall visitor experience—from content needs to better navigation.
If you’re familiar with Urchin, just think of Google Analytics as Urchin, Version 2. Some of the strongest improvements include speed, usefulness of reports and overall ease of use. Users are strongly encouraged to use Google Analytics. It’s completely free and only requires that you have a Google account to use it.
The remainder of this article walks you through creating a Google Analytics account for your web site.
1. Create a Google Analytics account.
If you already have a Google account, you may already have access to Google Analytics without creating a new account. If not, visit: http://www.google.com/analytics and click on the “Sign Up Now” link. Fill in the information required to create your account. Google will send you an email to verify your new account. Next we’ll let Google know which web site you want to collect visitor trends from.
2. Add your Web site to your Google account.
Adding your web site address to your new Google account is the next step in allowing Google to start tracking your visitor actions for you.
To add your web site, log-in to your new Google account. Look for the “Sign Up for Google Analytics” area and click on “Sign Up.” Fill in the fields, clicking “Continue” when prompted until you reach the step titled “Add Tracking.” Make a note of the line in the code starting with ”_uacct”, including the characters in quotes which generally start with “UA-”. Press “Continue.”
3. Link your Google account with your Web site.
Now you’re ready for the last step, setting up your site to communicate with your Google account. You will need to go from Google to your site and back again in this step, so open a new browser window and log-in to your Web site. Click on the “Statistics Manager”. In the “Provider” drop-down field, choose “Google Analytics.” In the “Username” field, type in the characters starting with “UA-” that you noted from the “Add Tracking” page while in Google. Include all the characters within the quotation marks, such as “UA-123456-1”, then press the save icon.
To finish up, go back to the browser window displaying your Google account and press “Check Now.” You should see a message saying “Analytics has been successfully installed and data is being gathered now.” If you do, click “Done” at the bottom of the page. Congratulations, you’re now using Google Analytics.
4. Viewing your site traffic.
Although Google immediately starts collecting data, you won’t be able to immediately see any information. So how do you view this information in the future? You can access your Google account right from your Web site Control Panel. Log into your site, click on the “Statistics Manager” and then click on the “View Reports” tab. A new window will open taking you to the Google log-in page. Enter your Google account information to log-in. To access the reports, click on “View Reports” link. Try clicking on the links in the “Dashboard.” Each of these shows your site traffic information from different perspectives.
