For the purposes of this post – which is geared to beginner level web marketing – we’re going to go right back to the basics with Google Analytics.

In the old days of the frontier, everyone had to install complicated web statistics programs like Urchin or Unix based log files to be pored over to glean information about how many people visited, how long they spent on a site, what they clicked on – and these all took up monstrous amounts of space on hosting accounts. These bloated files – which even I feared to remove after reviewing the data – would crash sites, clog directories, and require overly technical maintenance to manage.

Well, no more. Google Analytics has been around for a number of years now. It is free, comes with great instructions, and arms the web site owner with real, factual data about how visitors are getting to their web site, what they’re doing while they’re there, where they’re leaving the site and other important information that is critical to measuring and refining an Internet marketing strategy.

There is simply no excuse to not be tracking your marketing online if you have your own web site.

Anecdotal information, such as questions like “Where did you find us?” is extremely unreliable. The visitor may say ‘the internet’. But what does that mean? Nothing. They may say, ‘Google’. A direct search on Google and a click to visit your web site? A direct search on Google and following a link to a directory site where your business is listed? Without being able to get factual answers to these questions, this kind of information is not only ineffective, it’s potentially damaging to your business.

If you are making emotional decisions about marketing based on anecdotal information you might as well be throwing spaghetti at the wall or giving those marketing funds to the people you like the best.

HOW TO SET UP GOOGLE ANALYTICS

1. First, go to Google and sign up for a free account. This can be done using your existing email address; I recommend using the one supplied by your Internet Service Provider.
2. Then sign up for a free stats account at Google Analytics.
3. Type your URL on the next screen.
4. Choose your country of origin and time zone (800 GMT Vancouver for example)
5. In the next screen add your contact information.
6. Follow the prompts to accept policies.
7. Create account.
8. Copy the block of code on the next screen

ADDING CODE TO YOUR WEB SITE

To insert the Google Analytics code, you will need an editor to get into your html code on the site, and access to an FTP (File transfer protocol) program to upload the changed files. OR, simply get your web designer to do this, or hire a designer to do this for you (about 30 minutes) and provide them with your FTP information.

If you are using a service like WordPress, you’ll need to open the footer.php file to place this code OR add a plugin like Google Analytics for WordPress to paste in the UA portion of the code.

1. Look for the </body> tag at the very bottom, just above the </html> bit of code.
2. Paste the Google Analytics Javascript immediately above the </body> tag.
3. If you have templates, insert the code in the same place and make sure all pages are updated with the new template and saved.
4. Uploaded the pages to your server, overwriting the existing files.
5. Return to Google Analytics to verify that data is successfully being collected.

For WordPress sites, click on Plug-ins, Add New, search for Google Analytics, select Google Analytics for WordPress, and then enter the UA string where indicated and save.

RELATED INFORMATION:

• Video tutorial, setting up Google Analytics

Next post: The Top 3 Google Analytics reports critical to understanding your Internet marketing plan’s effectiveness.