The best way to make your website work harder for your business is to understand how your audience interacts with it. Google Analytics provides free reporting on your web traffic, and it’s easy to set up in under 10 minutes! You’ll get access to reporting on:
- Visitors to your site – How many people visited, what country they’re in, and what language their browser is set to.
- Traffic sources – The social media channels and websites that drove them to your site.
- Traffic by time of day – What time your audience visits your site.
- Website activity – What pages on your website people are visiting, how long they are there, and how many of them are looking at other pages.
We check our Google Analytics every month — it’s a great way to determine what’s working online for our business! Here’s how to set it up:
Step 1: Create Your Google Analytics Account
Go to the Google Analytics website. You can use your Gmail account to sign in, or you can create a new account. Once you’ve logged in with a Google account, click “Sign Up” to start using Google Analytics.
Step 2: Set Up Your Tracking ID
Once signed up, you will be taken to a screen that says New Account. Select that you would like to track your Website.
Fill out an account name, your website’s URL, the country you’re in, and your time zone.
Click the button that says Get Tracking ID.
To continue, read and Agree to the Google Analytics terms and services.
Step 3: Install the Insert Header and Footer Wordpress Plugin (complete this step in a separate tab)
Download the Insert Header and Footer plugin here. From your Wordpress dashboard, go to the plugins page, click Upload Plugin, and find the folder that you downloaded (it will have saved in your Downloads folder by default). Activate your new plugin.
In the left-hand menu on WordPress, you’ll now be able to find Insert Header and Footer under your Settings.
Step 4: Apply your Google Analytics tracking code.
Copy the code that Google Analytics generated for you. It should appear as a long HTML script.
In WordPress, find Insert Header and Footer under your Settings. Paste your Google Analytics code into the header section and hit save.
Now you’re all set up! You’ll be able to access reporting through Google Analytics (although note it is slightly behind real time). You may not see data roll in right away (it can take up to 24 hours), so sit back and relax. You’ve just made a great 10 minute investment in your business.
Kindly note: We don’t like to refer to ourselves as “experts”, but we do take great pride in sharing our business advice, distilled down from our extensive research and (often) mind-blowingly frustrating experiences we’ve endured and learned from. We try our best to create a clear and humble approach to good business tactics that you and your teams can understand and turn into effective and productive revenue streams. We are actual, real people and look forward to supporting you in any way we can, whether it’s on the topic of this post, or other business development and marketing communications you may be involved in, or considering. We are proud of the services we provide; if you don’t see what you’re looking for, just ask us – we also take pride in being super responsive!
