Small businesses have access to many tools and resources to help them run and grow, including web analytics tools that track site traffic and provide insights into user behavior. Among the best of these is Google Analytics, Google Analytics is a software built by Google to measure your website’s performance. This tool gathers data from your website, Google, and your visitors. It then visualizes it through graphs so you can easily see how your business performs.
With Google Analytics, you can:
Setting up Google Analytics is straightforward and best done early.
Note1: Set up Google Analytics when you launch your website, even if you don’t know how to use it yet.
Note 2: Start collecting data from the beginning so you’ll be able to understand long-term trends.
If you’re basing key business and marketing decisions on your GA data (as many organizations do), then the consequences of inaccurate or misleading source data due to a setup error could be disastrous.
The challenge for many is that it can be difficult to spot setup errors once you’ve started collecting data. There are numerous examples of webmasters accidentally placing two tracking codes on a page, for instance, resulting in numbers being reported twice and strategies being applied under false pretenses.
Unless you are also monitoring traffic through other external sources, such as Semrush, it can be difficult to know that something is amiss in the first place.
And even then, recalibrating your entire GA setup and trying to make sense of your now-tainted historic data can be a time-consuming predicament.
GA is a very powerful data collection and analysis tool that can provide potentially game-changing insights. However, given its complexity, this also means that a lot of things can easily go wrong.
That’s why it’s so crucial that you get the setup correct from the start!
Your GA account is how you’ll administer and manage your GA activities.
Once you are logged into your Google Account, go to the Google Analytics homepage and select “Start for free” in the top right-hand corner.
For this section, note that you need to give an account name, not a property name (which is covered in the next subsection). Therefore, you shouldn’t enter the actual domain URL here.
Your account name can, of course, be whatever you want, but it’s advisable to choose something simple, such as the name of your company. If you’ll be creating several accounts for several domains (or subdomains), it’s a good idea to differentiate them for simplicity (although this isn’t compulsory, as each account has its own unique ID).
For example, if you own an ecommerce store that has subdomains for different regions (i.e. paulsguitars.co.uk for the UK, and paulsguitars.com for the US), then you could name them Paul’s Guitars (UK), and Paul’s Guitars (US) respectively.
At this point, you will also be prompted to set your data sharing preferences, which covers what Google does with the data you collect. Ensure that you read through these policies, and only select the options that you are comfortable with.
Next, you need to define your property. In Google Analytics, a “property” can refer to any online asset you own, such as a website (www.yourshop.com), a blog (blog.yourshop.com), or an app. What’s important to note here is that your GA4 account can be associated with more than one of these properties.
For example, let’s say that you want to track everything — your site, your blog, and your app — under one account. In this case, you would set your property name as “yourshop.com” (i.e. the parent domain).
However, if you only wanted to track one of these properties, such as your blog, you would opt for “blog.yourshop.com”
You will also be asked to set your desired time zone and currency (these can be changed later if needed).
The final GA account setup step is to provide some straightforward details about your business, including:
Once complete, click the “Create” button. You will be asked to read and accept Google Analytics’ terms of service, and then arrive at your GA dashboard.
The first time you access your GA4 dashboard, you will be prompted to set up a data stream. Essentially, this is a gateway into GA for the data that you collect from your site (which we’ll cover in the next step).
Before you set it up, make sure that you have selected both the correct account in the top left corner and the correct property in the Admin dropdown menu (this page will look slightly different if you have created a UA property).
Once you have selected the correct property, select the “Web” option. You will be prompted to add your domain URL and to name your data stream.
You will also be asked to select which web protocol you are using (i.e. HTTPS or HTTP). If you’re not sure which protocol you are using, check to see if your site has a valid SSL security certificate.
If not, then your site will be HTTP. Alternatively, you can type your URL into a web browser, and then check the security status at the start of the URL.
In GA4, Google automatically assigns several enhanced metrics to measure, alongside the “standard” metrics, such as page views, scrolls, and outbound clicks. You can toggle these measurements on or off (and get a deeper explanation of what each metric is) by selecting the small “Settings” icon in the bottom right corner.
If there are specific things that you want (or don’t want) to measure, then you can select or deselect them here as appropriate. You can also change these preferences at any time. The “Setup Assistant” feature on your GA4 dashboard provides more information on these metrics.
Once you click “Create stream”, you will be given both a unique measurement ID and a unique stream ID, as seen below.
As mentioned, your data stream is the gateway into your GA4 portal. But to actually collect the data itself from your website and send it there, you need to add an Analytics tag — a small snippet of code — to your web pages.
There are several ways to do this, depending on both your preference and the structure of your site.
If your site has been created using a CMS-hosted “build-it-yourself” tool, such as Wix or Google Sites, then the setup process is already integrated into these tools. However, the exact steps will differ slightly, depending on who your CMS provider is.
On the data stream page that you created in the previous step, you will see a “G-” ID in the top right corner (see below).
You will need to enter this “G-” ID into the relevant field in your CMS. You can find out how to do this by following each of those providers’ internal instructions:
If you’re using another CMS, such as Weebly, Shopify, GoDaddy, or Squarespace, then you’ll need to copy and paste the entire global site tag using that CMS’s custom HTML feature.
As with the “G-” ID, you can find your global site tag on your data stream details page, under the “Tagging Instructions” section.
When you click on it, you will be given a small piece of JavaScript code, like the one below:
This is your global site tag. Your CMS will have a detailed guide on where to copy and paste this text, so follow those instructions carefully.
One of the biggest benefits of GA is that it allows you to customize your data collection and analysis to better reflect your business goals. For example, many businesses will class a “conversion” as a paid purchase.
However, you might define a conversion as a user downloading an ebook, filling out your Contact Us form, or signing up for a free course. This flexibility can significantly enhance your analysis and reporting.
On the left-hand side of your GA dashboard, click the “Configure” icon.
This will take you to a page where you will be able to configure custom events, conversions, and audiences.
In GA, events are triggered every time a user interacts with your site in a pre-defined way. For instance, every time someone views your page, this triggers a “page view” event.
By default, GA4 already collects data on a wide range of these events. Many are automatically collected, while others you will have already selected or deselected during the “Enhanced Measurements” set up in Step #2.
Therefore, it’s unlikely that you will need to add any more. However, if you are certain that your desired event doesn’t already exist, you can create a custom one (or modify an existing one) by choosing “Events” from the menu and then selecting “Create event”.
For your event to be satisfied, it will have to meet certain conditions, which you will set yourself. It’s highly recommended to follow Google’s in-depth, step-by-step instructions to ensure that you do this correctly.
Once done, click “Create” in the top right corner, and your event will automatically save.
Audience segmentation is a significant factor in marketing strategies, so you might find it beneficial to create your own custom audiences. To do this, select “Audiences” in the menu list, and then click “New audience”.
Google will automatically suggest audiences based on a number of factors, such as existing user data, acquisition methods, or demographics, or you can create your own from scratch.
There are a wide variety of identifiers and parameters available, allowing you to create as tailored an audience as you want. Let’s say, for example, that you want to create an audience for a particular social group using Google’s pre-set “Demographics” template.
Simply fill in the informational boxes using the parameters and identifiers that you require, and hit “Save.” You can also create a trigger to identify when a new user becomes part of this audience.
As mentioned earlier in this step, a conversion doesn’t always equate to a purchase. Therefore, to define your own, select “Events” from the menu list and search for the event that you want to mark as a conversion.
For instance, if you want to define a course signup as a conversion, you’d select “course_sign_up.” Then, under the column header “Mark as conversion”, set the toggle bar to “on”.
To verify that this has worked, you can go to the “Conversions” tab in the menu, and your event should appear in the “Conversions” list.
If you can’t find the event you’re looking for, then you can create a new one using the process described above, under “Create Custom Events.”
To ensure that you’ve set up GA successfully and that you’ve correctly placed the Analytics tag on your website, wait for 15 to 30 minutes after you’ve completed the setup. Then, go to “Reports” in the top left corner of your GA4 dashboard, and open the “Realtime” report.
If everything has been done correctly, the “Users right now” card should be refreshing every 15 seconds with a new count of users.
It takes between 24 and 48 hours for Google to start processing the data for all other reports, so you will not be able to see any user behavior or acquisition information before then. If, after this timeframe, you still don’t see any data, consult Google’s troubleshooting section. Or speak to an advisor
Once GA has successfully been installed and you are starting to collect data, it’s important to start leveraging the value of this information.
As we’ve already mentioned, the data that GA collects can:
However, GA can also be used in conjunction with a whole host of other tools, such as Semrush. This integration combines multiple tools in one location, providing deeper levels of insight and value.
In GA4, you can track customer journeys in the Life Cycle report collection. These reports help you see how people interact with your website and apps from initial acquisition to retention. More general user reports are available under the User tab with separate Demographics and Tech sections.
Life Cycle report segments include Engagement, Monetization, Retention and User Acquisition. Read on for a description of each report segment, the actionable insights they can deliver and how they can shape your digital marketing strategy.
GA4 acquisition reports help companies identify their best-performing campaigns and traffic sources. This information can help you divert marketing spending to more successful routes.
Customizable reports include the following:
Use Engagement reports to discover how engaged users are with your website or app. These reports are Google’s new way of measuring engagement, replacing traditional metrics like bounce rates.
These reports can track the following:
Monetization reports in GA4 provide online retailers and publishers with the data they need to maximize revenue generation.
Those reports now include the following:
Retention reports measure customer loyalty to help reduce churn. Use these reports to inform reengagement campaigns, retention messaging programs, customer loyalty programs and more.
Primary retention reports include the following:
