Member Article

Measuring your website traffic using Google Analytics

How do I measure my website traffic using Google Analytics?

The service is completely free. You just need to verify to Google that you are the website owner. Once you have done this you can access comprehensive and reliable information about how your website is being used from any computer connected to the internet.

How do I get started?

You need to sign up for an account at www.google.com/analytics and follow the on-screen instructions. You will create a username and password and you or your website developer will need to cut-and-paste a small piece of tracking code into every page on your website. Once the code is installed Google will start generating data and you don’t need to do anything further.

What next?

The system provides you with a lot of useful information but you should try to stay focused on what is really important to you. Information such as the number of unique visitors to your site, which pages have the highest number of visits, and which other websites and search engines are sending visitors to your site are vital information for most website owners.

Why should I bother?

The information from Google Analytics provides a basis for measuring the success of your website and monitoring changes in user behaviour that arise from your marketing activities.

If you subscribe to directories, acquire links from partner websites, or invest in search engine marketing Google Analytics will let you know what’s working and what’s not. You can use this information to help you decide how to allocate your resources to the areas that bring you the most visitors. You can even track whether traditional marketing activities such as leaflet campaigns, phone calls or other advertising have brought more visits to your website by looking out for changes in website traffic at the time of your promotions or using complementary software tools.

You can see which pages of your website are most visited and identify pages which need to be developed to become more attractive. Make sure important conversion and contact information is easily visible on all of your highest traffic pages.

What do I need to watch out for?

Google Analytics is not a real-time tracking system. Don’t be alarmed if it seems like numbers for a particular day seem to be down – there’s a delay of around 24 hours in counting and compiling the data.

The Analytics program works by leaving a tracking cookie (an electronic identification tag) on a user’s machine after they have visited your website. This helps produce more accurate information as it means that the system doesn’t double count your visitors. However, some users choose to delete cookies because they feel this type of tracking infringes their privacy, even though data sent to Google Analytics is anonymous and doesn’t include any personal information. This may lead to a small level (less than 5%) of under-estimation in the volume of visits your website receives.

If your website has a Privacy Policy you should update it to reflect your use of Google Analytics. In 2012 it’s likely that changes in EU legislation will make it mandatory to obtain permission from your website users to use Google Analytics.

Top tips

Make sure the Google Analytics tracking code is placed on every page of your site, not just the home page.

Use the automatic report generation feature to email yourself a weekly website traffic report.

Use the interactive map to see where in the world your visits are coming from and monitor any international promotions.

More information and useful links

Google Analytics Interactive Presentation

http://www.google.com/analytics/tour.html

Google’s own online marketing presentation for Google Analytics

Google Analytics Blog

analytics.blogspot.com/

Google’s blog regularly updated with additional hints and tips for getting the most out of the system.

EU cookie legislation advice from the UK Information Commissioner.

http://www.ico.gov.uk/~/media/documents/pressreleases/2011/enforcement_cookies_rules_news_release_20110525.pdf

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Iain Forrest .