A Beginner’s Guide to Setting Up Google Analytics for Your Website

Learn How to Configure Google Analytics and Get Insights to Improve Your Website’s Performance

As a website owner or digital marketer, one of the most important tools you need to have is Google Analytics. It’s a free tool that helps you track and analyze your website’s traffic, giving you valuable insights into your visitors’ behaviour, traffic sources, and content engagement. In this guide, we’ll walk you through the steps of configuring Google Analytics for your website using Universal Analytics, the earlier version of Analytics that only supports web measurement.

Step 1: Create an Analytics account

The first step in setting up Google Analytics is to create an Analytics account, unless you already have one. Here’s how you can create an account:

1. Go to the Google Analytics website (https://analytics.google.com/).
2. Click on the “Start for free” button.
3. Sign in with your Google account or create a new one if you don’t have one yet.
4. Fill out the required information to create your Analytics account, such as your account name and website URL.
5. Configure the data-sharing settings to control which data you share with Google.
6. Click “Create” to create your account.

Step 2: Create a property

The next step is to create a property, which is where you’ll be tracking your website’s data. Here’s how you can create a property:

1. In your Analytics account, click on the “Admin” button at the bottom left-hand corner of the screen.
2. In the “Account” column, click on “Create Account.”
3. Fill out the required information to create your property, such as your property name and website URL.
4. Select the reporting time zone and currency. If a visitor comes to your website on a Tuesday in their time zone, but it’s Monday in your time zone, the visit is recorded as having occurred on Monday.
5. Click “Show advanced options” to turn on the switch for “Create a Universal Analytics property.” This is important if you want to use Universal Analytics, which is the version we’ll be focusing on in this guide.
6. Enter your website URL and select the protocol (http or https).
7. Choose whether to create both a Google Analytics 4 property and a Universal Analytics property, or just a Universal Analytics property. If you need a “UA-” tracking ID, choose the latter option.
8. Click “Next” and provide information about your business.
9. Click “Create.”
10. Accept the Analytics Terms of Service and the Data Processing Amendment if prompted, and click “Finish.”

Step 3: Add the tracking code to your website

Now that you’ve created your Analytics account and property, the next step is to add the tracking code to your website. This code is what allows Google Analytics to track your website’s data. Here’s how you can add the tracking code:

1. In your Analytics account, go to the “Admin” section.
2. In the “Property” column, click on “Tracking Info” and then “Tracking Code.”
3. Copy the tracking code that’s displayed on the screen.
4. Paste the tracking code into the HTML code of your website, just before the closing </head> tag.

Once you’ve added the tracking code to your website, Google Analytics will start tracking your website’s data. It may take a few hours or even a day for the data to start showing up in your Analytics account.