Part Two ■ Setting Up Google Analytics

Next to some reports within a section, you may notice there is a small arrow
that points right. This arrow, shown in Figure 4-10, indicates there are additional
reports under that category. For example, within the Visitor report section,
there is a category for Visitor Trending. When you click the Visitor
Trending link, the navigation bar expands even further to show the reports
that are available on that next level down. The important thing to remember,
when navigating through Google Analytics 2.0, is that the more clicks you
make, the deeper into the collected information you’re drilling.

One of the nice things about the Dashboard page is that it’s completely customizable.
You can quickly add the reports that you use most often to this front
page by following these steps:
1. Navigate to the report that you want to include on the dashboard. All of
the reports for each section of Google Analytics are located in the navigation
bar on the left side of the screen.
2. Once you’ve reached the report that you want to add to the Dashboard,
click the Add to Dashboard button, shown in Figure 4-11.

3. The report is added to your dashboard and a message (shown in
Figure 4-12) is displayed on the current screen. The next time you view
your dashboard, you should see that report at the bottom of your screen.

You may find it irritating that this new dashboard system does not enable
you to remove one report. The Site Usage report that appears at the top of the
page is there to stay. You cannot remove it, and you can’t move it to a different
location on the page, which you can do with the other reports that you place
there.
To move a report from one place to another on your Dashboard, all you have
to do is place your pointer over the gray bar at the top of the report. Your
pointer will change to a four-pointed arrow. Click-and-hold that bar while you
drag the report to the desired location. Using this method, you can arrange all
of your reports (except that Site Usage report) in any order that works best for
you. Kudos to Google for making this element of Google Analytics 2.0 much
more user-friendly than in the previous version of the program.
There are also some changes to the way in which you get help in Google
Analytics 2.0. In the previous version of the program, getting help was most
difficult. The online help system was set up in a very circular, hard-to-navigate
way. With this new system, however, all you have to do is navigate to the
report on which you need help, then click the About This Report link on the
left side of the page. A tooltip appears, explaining the purpose for the report,
and the basic “need-to-know” information.
For more in-depth information, click the Conversion University link just
below the About This Report link. Again, a tooltip opens, giving you a preview
of the additional information that’s available in Conversion University—
Google’s training system. If you want to know more than what’s provided in
the tooltip, click the Read More link at the bottom of the tooltip box, and you’ll
be taken to the relevant article at Conversion University.

Finally, as you navigate through Google Analytics 2.0, you may notice two
buttons near the top of each report page. These buttons—Export and Email—
indicate new functionality that users of Google Analytics have been waiting for.
Use the Export button to export any report or Dashboard to a file. You have
your choice of file types: PDF and XML are file types that are available for all
reports. But CSV and TSV file formats are also available for some reports. If you
want to export a report to one of these file types, all you have to do is navigate
to the report, click Export, and then select a file type from the links that appears.
After you click the link, a dialog box appears prompting you to open or save the
report. Use the dialog box to specify where you want to save the file and what
the file name should be and then click OK. The report will be saved.
When you click the Email button, you’re taken to a page like the one shown
in Figure 4-13. From this page, you can send a report to an e-mail address as an
attached file.
To send a report in e-mail, all you need to do is add the e-mail address the
report should be sent to, create a subject and description for the message, and
then select a file format. On the right side of the page is a preview of the message
that will be sent. When you’ve finished entering the information, click the
Send button and the message will be sent to the specified recipients.
The e-mail option also allows you to schedule a regular mailing of a report.
If you click the Email button from within a report you’ll be taken to the Setup
Email page. From this page, click the Schedule tab. The page will reload and
you’ll notice that there is now a Date Range/Schedule drop-down menu, and
the Send button has changed to Schedule.
Set up your e-mail just as you would if you were sending a single e-mail,
except set the schedule for the report you would like to have sent. You have some
options there also for the frequency of the data you’d like sent. For example, if
you choose Weekly, then the report that’s sent will include all of the data from the
one-week period since the last report was sent.
Once you’ve set all of the options, click the Schedule button and the message
is scheduled to be sent, on the schedule you have chosen, to each of the
recipients you specified. Once the message is sent, you’ll be returned to the
report view, but a gold bar at the top of the report will display a confirmation
that your report sending schedule was set. In that bar, there is also a link to
Manage Scheduled Reports. Click this link to view scheduled reports, stop
sending them, or modify them.
If there is more than one report you would like sent on the same schedule,
then you can add a report to an existing schedule. Navigate to the report that
you would like to include in the scheduled send, then click the Email button at
the top of the page. When the page reloads and the e-mail form is showing,
click the Add to Existing tab. This takes you to a page that displays the reports
that you have scheduled to send at specific times. Select the schedule to which
you would like to add the report and then click the Add Report button. The
report is added to the existing schedule and you’re returned to the report page.
The ability to send your reports by e-mail or to export them to files makes
Google Analytics 2.0 an even more useful tool than it has been in the past. It’s
no longer necessary to take screenshots or captures to share this information
with other people inside or outside your organization. Now all you need is an
e-mail address. With a few mouse clicks, you’ll have your reports delivered to
whoever may need to see them, or you can even schedule regular mailings so
that you don’t have to think about such things. This feature adds much more
usability to the Google Analytics application.

Navigating Analytics

By now, you’ve had a taste of navigating through the Google Analytics site. It’s
an intuitive, point-and-click navigation method that lets you start at the most
general of pages and takes you deeper into more specific pages as you go on.
For example, when you sign in, you’re taken to the Analytics Settings Dashboard.
If you click one of the View Reports links on that page, you’re taken to
the reports for the corresponding web site. The first page for each account (or
web site) that you’re monitoring is the Dashboard page. This page, shown in
Figure 4-9, is an overview of the reports that are available to you through
Google Analytics for that specific account or web site. It allows you to see
quickly the most important measurements for your site.
From the Dashboard page, you can navigate to every other report in Google
Analytics 2.0. The navigation bar on the left side of the screen is where you’ll
find links to all the reports. Each section of reports is divided into a group that
includes all of the reports related to that aspect of analytics. If you click the title of the report section, the navigation bar expands to show links to each of the
reports in that section.

Part Two ■ Setting Up Google Analytics

Activating Tracking

Analytics uses a snippet of JavaScript code to track the traffic on your web site
as shown in Figure 4-6. You have to place that code on your site before the
Analytics tracking is activated. It’s not hard to do. All you have to do is copy
the code that Google provides when you set up your account and paste it into
your web site code before the tag at the end of the page.
Save and republish the page, and Google Analytics will automatically detect
the correct placement of the code. This may take a couple days. Or it may happen
quickly. We’ve seen it happen both ways.
The key piece of information in the tracking code is the line that begins
uacct=UA followed by a seven-digit number. This number is unique to each
web site profile, and it tells Analytics which profile owns the ping your site
sends when a page gets loaded.
After you’ve pasted your code into every page you want to track, click
Continue. You will be brought to your Analytics Settings Dashboard shown
in Figure 4-7.
On your Analytics Settings dashboard (which you’ll learn more about in
Chapter 5), you should see a message that indicates the code has been detected
and data are being gathered for the analytics. The detection of the code should
be immediate, but it could take a couple of days for any analytics to appear. In
the meantime, if you click the Check Status option, you’ll be taken to the Status
Tracking page, as shown in Figure 4-8.

Analytics will say whether it detects your tracking code or not and whether
it is waiting for data or receiving data. Depending on how busy your web site
is, it can take several days to several weeks to get enough data into Analytics
to make the graphs mean anything. Regardless, Analytics always shows a listing
of your code on the Tracking Status page in case you misplace it somehow
(for instance, during a site redesign). Click Done when you’re finished with
the page to go back to Analytics Settings.

NOTE To track more than one page of your web site, you need to add the
tracking code to every page you want to monitor. For example, if you have
15 pages in your web site and you want to track all of those pages, you need
to place the code snippet on every one of those 15 pages. Any pages that do
not contain the tracking code will not be monitored.

At that point, all of the reports and graphics for your site metrics should
appear in your Google Analytics account. Google Analytics is a historical analytics
program, which means statistics are not tracked in real time. The statistical
data that appear in your analytics reports will be one to two days behind. It’s not
a perfect solution, but despite the delay, the depth of information provided is
both accurate and useful.

Signing Up for Google Analytics

When you’re ready to get started with Google Analytics, the first thing you
need is a Google account. If you’re a Gmail or AdWords user, or if you followed
the instructions mentioned previously for creating a Google account, you
have everything you need.
All you need to do is sign in, using the account information that you already
have. Google Analytics is not in beta anymore. It’s open to the public. Just
enter your Google Account name and password as shown in Figure 4-2 and
click Sign in. If you prefer for Google Analytics to be in another language, the
program supports 17 languages including Queen’s English, Russian, French,
and Chinese. You can select your preferred encoding from a menu in the upper
right-hand corner before you sign in.
You’ll land on a splash page like the one in Figure 4-3. Click Sign Up to
continue.

Now, to the meat of the sign-up process. From the page shown in Figure 4-4,
choose http:// or https:// from the menu, depending on whether your site is
on a secure server or not. Then enter your site’s URL. In this case, we’ll be tracking
the web site for Mary’s mother’s rental house (Mary is already tracking
every other site she owns).

Give the site a name, although Google Analytics will automatically enter the
domain name for you. Choose the country where you’re located. This sets the
time zone menu to show only the correct time zones for your country, so don’t
choose France when you need Fiji. Next click Continue.

First, You Need a Google Account

If you don’t have an account with Google, signing up for one is easy. The
amount of information required is minimal, just your e-mail address and
physical location. In Figure 4-1, you can see the information required to create
an account with Google.
You can sign up for a Google account through the main Google web page.
Go to www.google.com and click the Sign In link in the top right-hand corner
of the page.
On the page that appears, you’ll see a sign-in dialog box where you can
enter your username and password. You won’t have that information yet.
Instead, click the link below this box that says Create an account now.
On the next page, you’ll enter your sign-up information. You’ll be asked for
your e-mail address, password, location, and a verification word. Once you’ve
entered that information, read and accept the terms of service, and then click I
Accept. Create my Account.
Google sends out confirmation e-mails for new accounts to prevent spambots
from creating bogus e-mail accounts. Within a few minutes you should
receive a confirmation e-mail. When you do, click through the link in the
e-mail to activate your account. Once that’s complete you’ll have an active
Google account.

Getting Started

When Google purchased Urchin on Demand, industry analysts predicted that
the merging of Google’s technology with Urchin’s capabilities would be a
great relationship. Chalk one up for the analysts because it truly has turned
out to be a marriage made in analytics heaven. Sure, there were some growing
pains in the beginning, but combining a successful analytics program like
Urchin with the power and simplicity of Google’s technology has created an
application that anyone can use.
It’s not all roses and champagne, however. Even paradise has bugs, and
Google Analytics isn’t immune to them. Fortunately, the bugs have been pretty
minor. You should have a minimum of frustration setting up Google Analytics.
You could encounter a few issues, but we’re going to walk you through those
to make this as painless as possible.

Setting Up Google Analytics

The average professional analytics package is eminently flexible and powerful.
It can track every detail, every goal, and every bounce on your web site.
Unfortunately, that also means you have to be a propeller-head—or hire
one—to set up and use the average professional analytics package. You’ll
spend a lot of dough getting every last detail exactly right, and it’ll take more
time than you have.
Google Analytics is not your average professional analytics package. Yes,
it’s slightly less flexible, but it’s every bit as powerful. What sets Google Analytics
apart is that it’s intuitive —easy to use—even if you want to integrate
Google Analytics with your AdWords campaigns. You won’t even need a propeller
on your hat, much less one implanted in your skull.
Still, there are some steps in the Google Analytics setup that could be a bit
tricky. Part II includes everything you need to know about setting up Google
Analytics, including how to integrate it with AdWords. Each chapter walks
you through a different aspect of setting up Google Analytics. No propellers
required.
If you really want more advanced information, however, you can find that
elsewhere in the book. Chapter 9 covers some of the advanced functionality of
Analytics. These real-world examples will have you using analytics in ways
you may not have even dreamed were possible.