Google Analytics is an extremely important tool for organizations of all kinds, but it may be tough to grasp due to its numerous technical jargon and measurements. Use this guide to learn about Google Analytics, how to create a Google Analytics account, and become acquainted with some of the most significant metrics and keywords.

Google Analytics is a free Google Analytics tool that allows you to analyze the performance of websites and applications. GA connects with Google’s other marketing and advertising platforms, including Google Ads, Search Console, and Data Studio, making it extremely convenient if you’re currently utilizing Google technologies.

Google Analytics can provide you with all kinds of information about your website, including the following:

• How many visitors your website gets
• Demographic information about your visitors
• How many visitors access your site via mobile device
• Where your website traffic is coming from
• Which marketing tactics work best
• Which pages on your website are the most popular
• How many visitors are converted into leads or customers
• How to improve your website’s speed

Google Analytics can have an enormous impact on your business, because, like most businesses, your website serves as a hub for most of your digital traffic. Any other marketing you do online, like social media ads or search engine ads, will likely direct users to your website at some point, which means that analyzing your website is the best way to get a full view of how effective your marketing campaigns are at driving traffic.

“The best benefit of using Google Analytics is monitoring what channels your traffic comes from,” said Mark Condon, CEO and founder of ShotKit. “We can easily see each source of traffic (Google CPC, Facebook, organic) that is color-coded in Google Analytics to show what number of visits are from that channel.”

Here are some other key benefits of Google Analytics:

• Data visualization features make it easy to understand your data.
• Reporting tools allow you to easily collect, present and compare any data set or combination of data sets.
• All data is collected and reported in real time.
• Data about your audience is comprehensive and easy to act upon.

Google Analytics provides a wealth of information about your website, your marketing strategy and your audience. It also allows you to monitor the following aspects of your website:

• Online marketing strategies
• Site content
• User experience
• Device functionality
• What is working well
• What needs to be improved

Additionally, GA automatically collects data, which means it requires little or no work on your part to collect important metrics about your marketing efforts. It provides you with valuable information about your customers, allowing you to enhance the user experience and encourage return visits. For example, you can use your visitors’ demographic information (e.g., age, gender, location) to tailor your website to address their unique needs, or adjust your website design to fit the devices your customers are using to access your site.

With Google Analytics, you can “slice data in different ways to answer a lot of questions about how your website is used,” said Josh Peichoto, a digital strategy manager. “This insight helps drive how to make improvements that align with actual customer usage and how they align with your business goals.”

Tailoring your website based on what you learn from Google Analytics can also have a major impact on your site’s search engine optimization. SEO helps to increase the traffic to your website by improving your position in search engine rankings. The more traffic your website gets, the more leads and conversions it receives; having content targeted specifically to your customers can earn you better visibility on search engines.

To get the biggest benefits from Google Analytics, define your specific objectives before digging into the data.

“You should learn about how Google Analytics would benefit you specifically,” said Tonya Davis, marketing manager at ThoughtLab. “An e-commerce site owner will use GA differently than a blog site would. You need to know what goals you are trying to achieve to understand how Analytics can help you. Are you wanting more traffic? Better site engagement? Higher conversions? By having a clear goal in mind, you can learn exactly how to use Analytics to help you achieve it.”

Google started offering its Google Analytics platform to users in 2005 and made it free in 2006. It continued to add features, coming out with a new version called Universal Analytics (UA) in 2012 that tied them all together. In 2020, it released Google Analytics 4 to replace UA.

Read Also: What is ROI in Digital Marketing?

Setting up Google Analytics 4 for your website is relatively simple for new users. If you’re already using UA, it requires an additional step to link it and draw data from your UA account.

Step 1. Create an Account

The first thing you need to do is sign up for a Google Analytics account:

• Head to the Google Analytics homepage and click on “Start For Free.”
• Provide the required information and confirm your account.
• Go to the Admin page, click on Account and select “Create Account.”
• Specify an account name and the site data you want to share with Google.

• Click “Next.”

Step 2: Add Your First Property

• Select “Create Property.”

• Create a name for it, such as “My Startup website,” and choose the time zone and currency. Click “Next.”
• Choose the industry category and business size. Click “Create.”
• Accept the Data Processing Amendment and Terms of Service.

Step 3: Set Up a Data Stream

• Select “Web.”

• Put in the URL of your site and a stream name, such as “My Startup website (webstream).”
• Choose to enable or disable Enhanced Measurement. Enabling it collects page views and other events automatically. You can change the events you want to collect at any time.
• Click “Create Stream.”

Step 4: Set Up Data Collection

If your site uses Wix, WooCommerce, Google sites, or WordPress, which are among the most popular website builders, find the Measurement (“G-“) ID you need for the Google Analytics field for your CMS by doing the following:

• Go to Admin
• Click on Property and select the property, “Data Streams,” then “Web.” Select the data streams
• Look to the upper right to find your “G-” ID, and then copy it for your CMS

If your site uses other website builders or CMS, find your global site tag:

• Go to Admin > Property > Data Streams > Web
• Look for “Tagging Instructions” and select “Add new on-page tag.” Look for the Global Site Tag and copy the entire code to paste to the customer HTML feature of your CMS.
• You can also add the global site tag to your web pages. As this would entail accessing the HTML, ask for assistance from your web developer.

Step 5: Link UA to Your Google Analytics 4

If you already have a UA account, you can connect it to your Google Analytics 4 account by inserting code on your site that sends data to both accounts:

• Go to Admin > Property > Data Streams. Click on “Web”
• Look for “Tagging Instructions” and select “Use existing on-page tag”
• Select “Google Tag Manager” and open the container implemented on your page
• Select “Tags” and click on “New”
• Select “Tag Configuration” and click “GA4 Configuration”
• Supply the “G-” ID
• Choose to trigger the tag on “All Pages”
• Name the tag and click “Save”

Step 6: Make Google Analytics 4 Go Live

• Go to the “Tag Manager” and click “Submit”
• Put a version name and description and click “Publish”

Step 7: Confirm installation

• Select the property you created
• Select “Real-Time” to view the report, which confirms if your site is sending data to Google Analytics 4

What Are Some Google Analytics Terminology And Metrics

To properly use and get the most out of Google Analytics, it’s important to understand the relevant metrics and terminology. Here are some important terms to know, as well as the most commonly tracked metrics on Google Analytics:

Terms to know

• Metric: A metric is a quantitative measure of data that shows how a website is performing in relation to a specific category. Examples of common metrics on Google Analytics include sessions, users, page views, bounce rate, entrance rate and exit rate.
• Dimension: A dimension is the criterion a metric is measured against, and it can provide a more specific group of data. For example, rather than just measuring sessions, you could measure sessions (the metric) by country (the dimension). Other examples of dimensions in Google Analytics include sessions by page, page views by device, average time on page by channel and bounce rate by channel.
• User: In the context of Google Analytics, a user is a unique visitor to a website. Whenever a new user lands on your website, Google Analytics will assign them a “unique ID” or “client ID” that is stored as a cookie in that user’s browser. The number of users is the most-tracked GA metric.
• Page view: A page view is recorded anytime a page is viewed by a user. However, keep in mind that the number of page views doesn’t tell the whole story. For example, a user landing on a page counts as a page view, but the same user reloading that same page counts as an additional page view. And it would count as yet another page view if the user were to leave the page and then come back to it.
• User behavior: The behavior section on Google Analytics shows what visitors do on your website, like which pages they visit and what actions they take on those pages, such as clicks or transactions.
• Session: A session is recorded by GA every time your website gets a visitor and ends after 30 minutes of inactivity. Any user behavior – such as page views, clicks or transactions – that is tracked during this time is counted as one If the user comes back to your website after a few hours or two days later, for example, they will begin a new session.
• Source: This shows where your website traffic is coming from (such as a search engine or email link).
• Landing page: landing page is the first page visitors see when they enter your site. As such, it’s important to optimize your landing page to ensure your visitors can quickly find the information they need.
• Organic traffic: Organic traffic means any visitor who lands on your site as a result of unpaid search results, such as someone performing a Google search and clicking on your website.

Metrics

• Bounce rate: The bounce rate shows what percentage of your website visitors triggered only one request from the GA server, such as a single page view. In short, the bounce rate shows how many visitors enter the site and then leave without viewing any other pages.
• Average session duration: This metric tells you how long visitors stay on your website and is calculated by dividing the total duration of all sessions by the total number of sessions.
• Percentage of new sessions: If a user without a client ID visits your website, the user is logged as a new session. This metric shows the number of first-time sessions on your website in any given time period.
• Sessions by channel: Google Analytics classifies your traffic to make it easier for you to track the performance of individual channels, such as direct, paid, organic and social. Sessions by channel means the number of sessions conducted under each channel group.
• Pages per session: Pages per session is calculated by dividing the total number of page views by the number of sessions and can give you a good idea of the overall engagement on your website.
• Average time on page: This is the amount of time a user spends on a single page. You want to aim for users spending a long time on pages, as this reflects engaging content.
• Page views by page: This metric shows how many page views your website received within a certain amount of time.
• Entrances: The entrance percentage counts how many users land on a certain page as their entrance onto your website. In other words, it measures how many times a certain page was the first page viewed in a user’s session.
• Exit percentage: This metric shows the page that a user viewed last in a given session. If a page on your website has an unusually high exit percentage compared with your other pages, it could be an indication that something on that page is not enticing users to stay.
• Device usage: This metric shows which devices visitors are using to access your website. You can use this information to adjust the design of your site so it’s more responsive to these types of devices (e.g., smartphone or tablet).
• Behavior flow: Behavior flow shows you how many people move through your site based on how they were “acquired.” You can view individual pages and sort by acquisition type (source, medium and channel).
• Site speed: This metric can be a great way to measure ranking, usability and comparison against competitors. If your website doesn’t load quickly enough, Google will not rank it as highly as your competitors, and visitors are likely to bounce to a different site to get their information.
• Goal completions: In the context of GA, “goal completions” are the number of times that website visitors complete a specific “goal” on your website. You can define what constitutes a goal, such as visits to a certain URL, purchases or email sign-ups.