Getting Started with Google Analytics – 8 Steps to Actionable Insights

Internet marketing agency, SiteVisibility, give 8 essential steps to get accurate, actionable data.

Measuring performance is critical to online success and Google Analytics (GA) is one of the most important online services to do so. GA provides valuable insights into your online business performance. Here are my 8 essential steps to get accurate, actionable data.

1.    Create a Measurement Plan

Have a plan and document your online objectives - Watch this video at Analytics Academy to learn how: https://analyticsacademy.withgoogle.com/course01/unit?unit=2&lesson=4

2.    Set up 3 ‘views’ for each property

GA creates one view called ‘All Web Site Data’ per property.  Add 2 more to safeguard your data:  Create a ‘Test’ view for testing, then a copy called ‘Master’. Ensure country, time and currency settings are correct.

See https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6083325

3.    Exclude Internal Teams from Reports

Visits from your own business teams skew the data. Exclude IP addresses using a filter. Test all new filters on the ‘Test’ view first, and then add them to the ‘Master’ view.

a)    Create the filter: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1034823
b)    Exclude IPs or a range of IPs: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1034840

Review quarterly, as IP addresses can change. A fixed IP address helps resolve this.

4.    Ecommerce Tracking

If you sell directly from your website, set-up ecommerce tracking. Get a competent developer to add the code to your site. It’s technical! – See:

https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/analyticsjs/ecommerce

5.    Track Internal Site Search

Customers unable to find services or products may use your internal site search. This is valuable data on customer intent. Turn on the site search setting on all views. See:

https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1012264?hl=en#Params

6.    Set-up Campaign tracking

GA doesn’t track all marketing channels out of the box. Use Google’s URL tool to create tracking links for your email newsletter or social campaigns. See

https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033867

7.    Set-up Goals

Goals are the actions customers take in their path to doing business with you - e.g. newsletter sign-up, a purchase, or account sign-up. Use a currency value for goals even if you don’t

have/know exact values to see your websites valuable pages. 

8.    Link AdWords

On the properties admin page, link any AdWords accounts to get detailed PPC reporting within Google Analytics.

For more information and advice visit www.sitevisibility.co.uk/services/analytics/ 

If you want to contribute to the Chamber blog, contact us on hannah@brightonchamber.co.uk