How to setup Google Analytics on your website

It is available for free and all you need is a Google or Gmail account to sign up.
While Google Analytics can be a little complicated to understand, there are quite a few basic reports that show a lot of valuable information and insights if you are looking to grow your business.
In this post we will go over the steps you can take to set up and install Google Analytics so you can eliminate the guesswork and focus on stats that matter in order to make data driven-decisions.

If you already have a Google or Gmail account, you can skip this step and get started with getting a Google Analytics account started. If you don’t have an account yet, don’t worry creating a Google account is very easy and all you need to do is follow the steps Google prompts you to fill out. Google will ask you if you would like to create a public Google+ profile, this is optional and not necessary to create a Google Analytics profile.

Once you have your Google Account, go to the Google Analytics homepage, and click “Start for free.”
From there you can log in with your Google account.

You’ll be taken to an account setup screen. Please make sure to click on track Website.
Google will ask you for some basic info about your site. (For your account name, you can use your name or your company name.)

After you have filled out information including your Account name, your Website Name & URL, your Industry category and Reporting Time Zone, you can click on the “Get Tracking ID” Button at the bottom.

You will then need to accept the Terms and conditions and will then be taken to a screen where you’ll be presented with your tracking ID, a unique string of numbers beginning with the letters “UA.”
Make sure to copy this tracking code because you will need to enter it in your WordPress site.

Now that you have your Google Analytics tracking code, it’s time to get it on your site. There are multiple ways you can do this. You can add a plugin to your website like MonsterInsights for example, if you are a bit more technical you can add it directly into your header.php file or you can add it directly into your theme settings. We recommend that you add it directly into your theme settings. Because having too many plugins will slow down your website and adding it into the theme settings will save you the time to go through each single page you created.

Now in order to add the code to your theme settings, you will have to locate the tracking code field. Where you find this, is depending on your theme and type of site you have. Once you have located this field, all you have to do is place the unique code that Google Analytics gave you in it.
If you’re not sure how to do this, reach out to a developer to help you install it.

The final step is to make sure that everything is set up correctly. Now that you have installed the tracking code on all of the pages on your website, it’s important to know that the majority of data in Google Analytics only appears in your reports 24 hours after it happens.

Please keep in mind that Google Analytics will always be one day behind, and you won’t be able to view data from the present day. In order to see if you have set everything up correctly, Real-Time reports can show you whether data is coming in. These reports don’t show nearly as much data as some of the other reports, but you won’t have to wait 24 hours to see what’s happening. Open another browser tab, go back to your website and click through a few of your pages and you should be able to see the pages you visited pop up in your Google Analytics report.