Introduction to Google Analytics; A beginners Guide

A website is one of a businesses’s customer touch point, more like a digital sale person. It is absolute true to say that, some (amongst others), of the reasons why we create website for your business is (1) Create awareness (2) customer easy accessibility (3) sales and conversion. One of the critical yet important additional importance of having a website which is often overlooked by website owners and business owner is data.

A website (as a customer touch point) needs to be analyzed. When a website starts to receive traffic, it is important to begin analyzing data sets like, the source of the traffic, reasons for the traffic, most visited web pages, amount of time spent on a page, bounce rate, conversion sate, etc. Monitoring all of these data sets would enable you make more informed decisions that will contribute to your website traffic and the overall online growth of your businesses.

But before we dive deep into Google analytics, here are 10 reasons why you need to have some form of data tracking and analizing tools on your website

1. Improving user experience: by analyzing website data, businesses can identify areas where their website may be confusing or slow, and make improvement that will enhance the user experience .

2. Increased conversion rate: By understanding how users interact with your website, you can optimize your website to encourage more conversions, such as purchase, or form submission.

3. Improved search engine optimization: website data analysis can reveal technical issues that may bee hurting your website search engine ranking, as well as opportunities to improve your website visibility  and attract more organic traffic

4. Better Targeted Marketing: By analyzing data on customer behavior and preferences, businesses can create more targeted and effective marketing campaign.

5. Increased customer insight: understanding how customers interact with your website can provide valuable insights into your cutomers behavior an needs, which can inform business.

Here are just some of the numerous reason and benefits of having data analytics and analysis tracking tools on your website.

Let’s dive deep into the major course of this post which is “understanding google analytics: a beginner’s guide”.

In order for you to take full advantage of google analytics, you need to first verify the ownership of your website with google with google search console

how to verify your website in google earth console

First step

visit search.google.com

sign in with your preferred email

The process of verifying your domain in the search console tarts begins with two different options. The first option is the verification of your entire website including subdomains, https and non https version of your website and every url it contain, while the other option allows you to verify and monitor just a specific protocol or path ( depending on your needs).

After submitting your url, you will be asked to verify for website. If you are going with the first option in the verification process, you will see a board that looks like this

At this stage, you will be asked to create and add a txt file to your dns record. This will help google confirm that you truelyown and have assess to the domain you are trying to claim. After a couple of hour, a day, two days maximum (if txt file is properly inserted) your domain will be confirmed.

the next step of the process is adding google analytics to your website

how to add google analytics to a website

there are several ways to add google analytics to a website. I’m going to be mentioning a few but I’ll be expanding on just one.

1. 1.  Google tag manage: Google tag manager is tag manager system that helps you add and insert tags to your website or web app. Tags are segments of code provided by analytics, marketing, and support vendors to help you integrate their products into your websites or mobile apps. Search.google.com

example of tags tat can be added in tag manger include

1. 1. • Google Analytics Universal tracking code or GA4 tracking code.
      • Adwords Remarketing code.
      • Adwords Conversion Tracking code.
      • Heatmap tracking code (Hotjar, CrazyEgg, etc…)
      • Facebook pixels.
      • Custom HTML scripts.
      • Cookiebot and other GDPR data privacy scripts.
   2. Add Google analytics short code to your WordPress website: You can add the Google Analytics tracking code directly to your website’s code by copying and pasting the code into the header section of your website’s HTML.
   3. Using a Plugin or Module: If you use a content management system such as WordPress, there are many plugins and modules available that make it easy to add Google Analytics to your site. Simply install the plugin, configure it with your Google Analytics tracking code, and you’re ready to go. Examples of plugins you are use to easily add Google analytics to your website include
      • MonsterInsights.
      • ExactMetrics.
      • Analytify.
      • Enhanced Ecommerce Google Analytics Plugin.
      • Google Analytics by 10Web.
      • GA Google Analytics.
      • WP Statistics.
      • WP Google Analytics Events.
   4. Hire a developer: Adding google analytics to a website can be a challenging exercise most especially if you don’t know how to properly place it and set it properly. It is most adviceable to hire a technical support that can help you place it properly and also make sure it is firing properly and that all necessary data is captured and measured.

Conclusion

1. Google analytics is important to help you measure website traffic, user experience and user behavioral pattern. These informations will help you make better decisions and how well to serve your customer and that will result in more sales and conversion.

2. The first step to adding GA to your website is to verify the ownership of your website in google search console.

3. There are several ways to add GA to your website. Using google tag manager, using plugins like GA WordPress plugin.