Setting Up Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a free service offered by Google that gives website owners a detailed report about site traffic. Compared to the amount of invaluable data it will give you, setting it up is incredibly easy.

To install Google Analytics on your website:

Don’t have a Google account? Just click ‘sign up now’, fill in some brief details (you’ll just need a working email address), respond to the activation email and you’re done.

2. After you log on to Google Analytics, click on ‘setup’ and fill in your website details: domain name, account name, etc. Click ‘next’ to proceed.

3. Next, fill in some optional contact details. The only required field is your country. Click ‘next’ to proceed.

4. Finally, read over the terms of service, check the ‘I agree’ box, and submit.

5. On the final page, you’ll be given a bit of javascript. Just cut and paste this into your website, to all the pages you want to track – you may need to ask your webmaster or programmer to complete this step for you.

Google is now tracking your web traffic, and you can log in to Analytics any time to see detailed reports on where your users are coming from, how they’re finding you, etc.

The next step: understanding what all this data means.