Setting up a Google Analytics account is something you’ll want to get right the first time. If you’re unfamiliar with the process, there are a few details which can cause problems.
Creating a new Google account
A common mistake with setting up a Google Analytics account is people using their personal email addresses to do it. While it may seem convenient to keep everything together, keep in mind that you may not be the only person who needs to have access to the Analytics account, or you may need to link other accounts together with the Analytics account. The Google Analytics account needs to be transferable and modular, thus, if you don’t already have a dedicated marketing Google account, creating a new one is recommended.
If you need to create a new account, you can start here. Use the sign in link in the top-right corner and select Google Analytics. There should be a create account link somewhere on the page. From there, you can follow the process of putting in all the information that’s required to create a new account.
If you’re having trouble coming up with an email address to use, the format I use frequently is: businessname.marketing@gmail.com. Business name being where you enter your business’s name.
Setting up Google Analytics
After creating the account, try and log into Google Analytics and click the Sign up button on the far right. Start by giving the account a name. Typically, I make this the company name since the account should be thought of as the umbrella that can hold many different websites if necessary. The website name should resemble the website domain name in some fashion. I.e. the domain Discovertec.com would be the website name: DiscoverTec. It’s okay if the account name and the property name end up being the same.
Website URL is just the website URL copy and pasted. Industry category is whatever best matches your website and has no bearing on the actual data. Finally be sure to select the proper country and time zone. Click Get Tracking ID, review the terms and hit accept if you agree to them.
Google will now present you with a website tracking script and various implementation methods depending on what system your website is built with. This part may require the assistance of whoever was involved with creating the website. Since every website is different, I can’t go into specifics on a way to add this code. Google recommends the analytics script should appear between the <head> tags on a website, ideally right before the closing </head> tag.
Creating different views
Once the code is installed go back to the admin section in Google Analytics. You’ll notice in the right column that, by default, Google will have created a view for you called All Web Site Data.
Views in Google Analytics are different ways to represent the data from your website. Generally speaking, I only use two different views in Analytics: filtered and unfiltered. The filtered view blocks out all potential spam traffic from contaminating any data, and the unfiltered view is a catch-all that allows everything and anything in case data accidentally got filtered and needs to be retrieved.
All Web Site Data can represent the filtered data, so the unfiltered view needs to be created manually. Click on the view dropdown and select the last option of Create new view. Name the reporting view something to let you know that all the data here is completely unfiltered like “Unfiltered View”. Select the proper country and time zone and click the create view button. This is all you have to do with the unfiltered view. You can move back to the preview view by selecting it from the right column drop down.
Now that your Analytics account is setup, there are still a few things left to do. You’ll want to filter out traffic from your own IP address, and you’ll want to make sure you know how to identify spam.