A Beginner’s guide to Google Analytics.

What is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics is a free website analytics and performance tool. It collects and displays data on how, where and when customers use and navigate every page of a website. Google Analytics (GA) displays the data in a selection of tables and graphs on the platform itself but also offers the option to download all reports into a number of formats including excel.

Try Google Analytics for free with their demo account.

How does Google Analytics work?

Each page of a website is tracked by Google Analytics (GA) using a unique tag in the url. This tagging needs to be set up for GA to be able to read the customer’s behaviours ie. which links they click on, how long they stay on the page and which device they are using. When you create your GA account, you will be given instructions on how to add this tracking to your website.

What can I do in Google Analytics?

Once you have explored GA a few times you will realise the information you can pull from it is pretty much endless. My one piece of advice though is to set yourself a specific task or KPI to look at. Going through every section of GA not knowing what you’re looking for can make it seem overwhelming and likely mean that you will avoid using it again. To give you an idea, there are 5 main areas to explore;

Realtime - a realtime view of visitors, page views, demographics and sales. This is especially interesting to look at when you are launching at a particular date or time.

Audience - here is where you will find everything about your website user. Their location, device, browser, visiting frequency and so on.

Acquisition - this is where you can see where customer’s are coming from and which channels they are using to get to your website, including paid ads. Remember though, you will only be able to see data of users who have landed on your website. GA doesn’t tell you how many have used those channels or ads and gone somewhere else.

Behaviour - here is where you can see your customer journey and funnels. It is also where you can see how your website pages are performing in terms of page views, bounces, and value.

Conversions - this is the area my clients use the most - the sales reports. You can see number of units sold as well as value, all broken down by product name and/or sku. If you are retailing different brands on your website you can also breakdown your sales by brand name. This area also gives you a view of basket and checkout funnels.


How much is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics is free to all users. It’s one of the only in depth analytics tools out there that you don’t have to pay a set up fee or limited to a trial period. I recommend it to all my clients for this very reason. Unless you are looking at customer and website data at an advanced level, Google Analytics has everything you need and it will never expire.

What is Google Analytics 4?

GA4 is a new advanced version of what we know as GA (or previously know as Universal Analytics). It is very similar to GA in that is it a free analytics tools for websites but it differs in it’s display of measurements. GA uses sessions and pageviews for example, whereas GA4 uses parameters and events.


If you would like some help setting up and/or understanding Google Analytics for your website, please get in touch. I offer bespoke support and a ready-made package for small businesses looking to set up GA.

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