PixelMEDIA Inc.

Setting up a Google Analytics (GA) account correctly is imperative in order to view and analyze your website activity. By a correct setup, I don’t just mean adding the GA code to all pages of your website. You must configure the code and the settings correctly so you are receiving accurate information. Here are the steps to take to ensure your GA data is correct.

Correct Google Analytics Code

When setting up your GA code you must adjust it to take into account how your site is set up. For example, does your site utilize multiple sub domains? Are you currently using Urchin and want to continue tracking with this software as well as GA? Both of these instances require amendments to the code. To set up the code correctly you must go into your “Profile Settings” and click the “Check Status” link in the top right corner of the page. Here you will see the instructions for creating your code:

It is necessary to review both the “Standard” and “Advanced” tabs to make sure you set up your code correctly. Once you are confident that the code is tracking everything it needs to, it can be placed on every page of the site immediately before the closing </head> tag. A helpful tool to make sure the code is present on every page of the site is SiteScan™ from EpikOne.

Profile Information

The next step in setting up your account correctly is to edit the profile information. This page is also located on the main “Profile Settings” URL with the edit link below the “Check Status” link:

Here is a quick overview of each field:

Profile Name – The name you give to the specific profile. You might call the profile “Company XYZ Analytics.”  The profile name is especially important as you add more profiles and need to distinguish what each is tracking.

Website URL – The URL of the website you want to track.

Default page – Sometimes in the “Top Content” report you will see your homepage URL show up twice (eg: “/” and “index.html”). Within this field you should add “index.html” so within the report the homepage URL will only show as “index.html.”

Exclude URL Query Parameters – Used to exclude unique session IDs or other query parameters that are seen in the URLs (eg: upcid=). Usually, these parameters are found after the question mark in a URL.

Currency displayed as – The type of currency you will use to track revenues and/or goal values. E-commerce sites make more use of currency, however, B2B sites can benefit from setting values for goals (eg: a visitor filling out a contact us form).

Apply Cost Data – If you have an AdWords account you should sync it with your GA account in order to see what happens post click (you are also able to see AdWords metrics as well).

E-Commerce Website – If you sell online you’ll want to click the “Yes” button. However, you should also set up e-commerce tracking.

Site Search – If your site has a search box you’ll want to track what visitors are typing. If you do choose to track site search you will need to include a query parameter(s). This parameter is seen in the URL after the search occurs. For example, Google’s Site Search uses “cx=” as the parameter. You can also choose to exclude the query parameters from the report if you desire. Finally, if you use categories for site search you have the option to list query parameters and exclude them from the report.

As a side note, read this article to learn how to effectively leverage site search.

Goals and Filters

I won’t go too much into setting up goals as you can read about the process here, but suffice it to say that goal setup is important. By setting up goals on anything from a purchase being made to a visitor spending a certain amount of time on a key page, you are tracking site success.

Setting up filters is another key aspect to get the most accurate data. I would say the most common filter is to exclude your companies’ IP address so you will not see internal traffic within the reports. To set up this filter you’ll need to go to the “Profile Settings” page and then scroll down to “Filters Applied to Profile” and click “+ Add Filter” on the right hand side. Setting up an internal filter looks something like this:

This filter tells GA to exclude all traffic coming from this IP address.  You can find your IP address at www.whatismyip.com.

User Access

One of the most important items to determine is who will have access to the GA account and what access level that will. The two access levels are administrator and user. Administrators have the ability to edit all of the items discussed in this blog while users can only view reports. It certainly varies by company, but generally only employees that use GA every day and need to make actionable web decisions should have administrator access.

Conclusion

Setting up Google Analytics is more than just adding the code to all pages of your site. You must configure the settings correctly so you can trust your data. The settings I have discussed are by no means uniform to every account, but they must be reviewed before you start tracking.

Tags: google analytics