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ABOUT GOOGLE ANALYTICS (INTRO)

DOCUMENT CONTROL

Document title About Google Analytics (Intro)

Version 1.0 Status Release Reference M1Goo-001

Author Tara Wilson Date 16 March 2009

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CONTENTS

1. About this Document ............................................................. 3

2. Getting Started with Analytics ............................................... 3

2.1. What is Analytics? ...............................................................3

2.2. How to sign-up for Analytics .................................................3

2.3. How to access Analytics .......................................................3

3. Editing your Account Settings ................................................ 5

3.1. Overview of the overview page ..............................................5

3.2. Editing the main account details ............................................5

3.3. Editing Website profiles ........................................................6

1.1.1. Goals and Funnels ................................................................... 6

1.1.2. Filters .................................................................................... 7

1.1.3. Users ................................................................................... 10

4. Viewing Reports .................................................................. 11

5. Next time... ......................................................................... 12

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1. ABOUT THIS DOCUMENT

This instruction document is the first in a series about Google analytics. It is design to give you an in-

depth introduction into using Google analytics. Each document in the series will focus on a certain

section of the Analytics

This document is an introduction to Analytics – how to get started and an overview of the main

features.

2. GETTING STARTED WITH ANALYTICS

2.1. WHAT IS ANALYTICS?

Google analytics is one of the many useful (and free) tools that Google provides for the use of anyone

who wants their online business to thrive and grow. Once the analytics code is embedded in a

website, and the account is created, it offers in-depth analysis of your website, allowing you to

identify strategies that are or aren’t working, pages that are or aren’t performing well, and the best

sources for your website traffic.

There are so many tools featured within analytics that it is highly unlikely you will need to use them

all, but it is pretty safe to say that for any statistics you wish to find out about your website can be

found via analytics. You can manually monitor the site via the analytics portal, or you can have

customised report emailed to you directly for ease and efficiency.

This one of the best website analysing tools you will find on the internet.

2.2. HOW TO SIGN-UP FOR ANALYTICS

To use analytics, you will first need to have a Google account set up. To set one up, go here:

https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount

and enter your details.

Then, create your analytics account here:

http://www.google.com/analytics/sign_up.html

You will be given a piece of code which will need to be embedded in every page on your website that

you wish to record data for. You may need to contact your website administrator in order to do this,

but once the code is in place, it will start recording all kinds of statistics for you.

2.3. HOW TO ACCESS ANALYTICS

Once your account is all set up and connected to your website, you can start reviewing and comparing

your data.

Sign into your account here:

http://www.google.com/analytics/

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and click the button on the right-hand side of the screen.

This will take you through to the main analytics overview for your account which will display a list of

profiles. If you have just set up the account, you will only have one profile displayed here:

N.B. Notice the STATUS column: it displays a green tick in this image. Other icons are:

RECIEVING DATA – everything is working as it should

WAITING FOR DATA – the code has been detected but the data has not fully been

drawn into reports yet

TRACKING UNKNOWN / NOT VERIFIED – it is likely that the code as not been

installed in the homepage properly

From this page you have all the tools you need available. You have links to edit your account settings,

manager the users you allow to view and also manage your data, add new websites, view your data

and more.

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3. EDITING YOUR ACCOUNT SETTINGS

3.1. OVERVIEW OF THE OVERVIEW PAGE

This is the overview page, as seen in section 2.3:

The next section outlines the main links in this page and how to edit the settings of your account.

3.2. EDITING THE MAIN ACCOUNT DETAILS

To edit the name of the Account, delete the account or change your Data Sharing settings, click “Edit

account settings.

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GOALS FILTERS USERS

3.3. EDITING WEBSITE PROFILES

The main settings for the website profile in your account are:

To reach these, you can click edit next to the website profile which takes you through to view your

current settings for all three. Filters and users can also be reached by clicking on the appropriate link

directly underneath the list of website profiles.

1.1.1. GOALS AND FUNNELS

A goal can be almost any page, or action on a page, which serves some important purpose for your

business. It is somewhere you want your visitors to be. Within analytics, you can set up (up to 4) goals

in order to record the number of visitors that actually reached this point.

You can also set a desired path for a visitor to take through your website in order to reach this goal.

When viewing your analytics report, you can see this path as a funnel as it shows you how many

people followed the path and where visitors strayed from the preferred path. This can be a useful tool

in pinpointing a page with poor usability or irrelevant text which is losing you custom. Then you can

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combat this and help to funnel more and more visitors through your site to the best point of

conversion.

1.1.2. FILTERS

Using filters are a good way of helping to accurately record the actual number of visitors to your site

as they filter out the visits you do not wish to record.

For example, if you visit you and others at your company visit your site regularly, your analytics

reports will show you far increased numbers of customers to the site as they will also record those

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non-interest visits from employees. If you then analyse this data, the results will not be entirely true

to the visitors to the site. The best way to get around this is by using filters.

If you wish to create multiple of the same type of filter, i.e. Exclude all traffic from an IP address, this

can be achieved by either creating multiple filters, or by typing in multiple IP addresses into the IP

address box and separating each one by a “|”

REGULAR EXPRESSIONS

When typing in domains or IP addresses into the correct box when creating a filter, an important

point to be aware of is that it uses regular expressions, and if you wish to use an actual character

instead of the regular expression, you will need to use the escape character “\”. The most common

use for this is when using the dot (“.”) as part of a domain or IP address.

I.e. if wanting to exclude all traffic from the IP address 165.212.13.2, you will need to type in:

165\.212\.13\.2

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N.B. There are four types of regular expression characters you will need to be aware of for use with

filters in Google Analytics:

WILDCARDS

Substitutes for any single character (letter, number or symbol) – a little bit like a blank tile in

scrabble

Placed after any character, this will match zero or more of that character in place of the star

The same as the star (*), but this must match at least one of the previous character, never zero

Carrying on the same idea as the star (*) and plus(+), this matches either one or zero of the

pervious character

This acts as an “or”

ANCHORS

Put in front of a string of characters, this defines that that string of characters must be at the

beginning of the field

Put at the end of a string of characters, this defines that that string of characters much be at

the end of its field

GROUPING

You can create a non-default item grouping which will match exactly what is in the brackets

Characters entered in square brackets will match any items including the characters placed in

the brackets – in any order

The dash can be used with the square brackets ([]) in order to increase the length of the

characters with the brackets, while typing the least possible

OTHER

This is an escape character. Placed in front of any of the regular expression characters listed

above, the actual character will be evaluated rather than the regular expression function

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1.1.3. USERS

Managing your users that are allowed access to your analytics data is easy. The only possible

drawback of this is that all users must have a valid Google Account (see section 2.2 for details of

setting up an account).

ADDING A USER FOR A WEBSITE PROFILE

Navigate to the list of users for a certain website profile by clicking on the Edit button next to the

appropriate website profile in the account overview. Then scroll down until you see the current list of

users with access to the profile:

Click Add User in the top right-hand corner of this box to take you through to set up a new user.

ADDING A USER TO THE ACCOUNT AND GIVING THEM ACCESS TO MULTIPLE PROFILES

The best way to do this is to Manage Users from the account overview (underneath the list of website

profiles – see image in section 3.3). From here, you can click Add User at the top right-hand corner of

the existing user list and go through to add a user and give them permission to existing website

profiles.

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N.B. Giving users access like this is only necessary if you want to give them “View Reports Only”

access to profiles. If you make a user an Administrator, they will be able to view and edit the settings

for all website profiles which are set up within your account

4. VIEWING REPORTS

To view the collected data for a website profile, you need to click View Report for the profile from

within the account overview:

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This will take you though to a page which looks like this:

5. NEXT TIME...

Look forward to instructions on getting your data out of the report and making the

most of the analytical tools available to you in the next document.

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