How to use Google Analytics to obtain key statistics about your web site

Posted on March 24, 2007 at 11:51 pm

If you’re not already using this service, then you should definitely read this article! If you have a web site and you are not already monitoring your visitors, then you should consider using Google Analytics to find out key information such as how visitors found your site, what they visited while they were at your site, and how you can improve the user experience. It’s completely free and very powerful. I have found it to be far better than the basic stat services provided by my hosting company.

If you don’t have a Google account, go ahead and create own and then navigate over to http://www.google.com/analytics/. Login into your account and on the main page click “Add Website Profile” in the upper right corner to begin connecting your web site to Google Analytics.

Click the radio button “Add a profile for a new domain” and type in the URL of your web site into the textbox. Choose your time zone and click Finish.

On the next screen, you will be presented with the code that you will need to put into your entry page (index page). This code will need to be placed directly before the tag and it should only be put onto your main page, Google Analytics will track all the other pages automatically. If you are not sure on how to go about editing the page, contact your hosting company and ask them how to do it and they should be able to explain it. You really don’t have to edit any of the HTML, you simply have to copy and paste this code.

Once you have added the code to your web site, go to the main page by clicking “Analytics Settings” at the top left. Under the Website Profiles section, you should now see your web site listed along with a Status column at the far right. If Google Analytics has not yet found the tracking on from your web site, the status will show “Tracking Not Installed - Check Status“. Make sure your code has been entered and click Check Status. Google will look again to find your tracking code.

Once it has been found, you status will now change to “Receiving Data” with a green check mark! Your site is now being monitored by Google Analytics!

Now comes the fun part: checking out your stats! However, you’ll have to wait at least 24 hours before Analytics can tell you anything useful about your site. But after a day or so, log in and click on View Reports and you’ll get this really nice looking set of four screens called the Executive Overview.

And I have to say the overview is pretty damn nice! The chart at the top left gives you the current stats for the last week on visits and page views, the pie chart at the top right tells you how many visitors were new and how many returning, the map at the bottom left (and my favorite) shows you geographically where your visitors are coming from, and the pie chart at the bottom left show you from which web sites your visitors are coming from.

The marketing summary report will give you the Top 5 Sources that brought in visits, the Top 5 Keywords that brought in visits, and the Top 5 campaigns (referrals, organic, or direct).

The Content Summary will tell you the Top 5 Entrance, Exit and Content pages. Very useful information to have in order to figure out what content is attracting visitors and what is not!

Another great feature (probably the best) is the concept of goal tracking. Let’s say you want monitor not only who is coming to your site, but also if they buy your product or download you file or register for your newsletter. You can track all of those types of events using Google Analytics! All of you have to do is tell Analytics the URL of a page that can only be reached by completing a goal.

You can read more on how to setup goals here:

http://www.google.com/analytics/

Google Analytics has over 80 reports at your disposal and is one of the finest tools out there to get statistical data about your web site.

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» Filed Under Google Software/Tips