Yes, this is my first post in English. However many fall apart of my words order or grammar, I hope you can understand . In this article, I want to share about my experience using Google Analytics in my websites. Maybe you just heard this term “Google Analytics”. Let me introduce to you about Web Analytics first, before we discuss how to use Google Analtyics. According to The Web Analytics Associations, Web Analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of internet data for purposes of understanding and optimizing web usage. Web analytics is not just a tool for measuring website traffic but can be used as a tool for business research and market research. Web analytics applications can also help companies measure the results of traditional print advertising campaigns. It helps one to estimate how traffic to a website changes after the launch of a new advertising campaign. Web analytics provides information about the number of visitors to a website and the number of page views. It helps gauge traffic and popularity trends which is useful for market research. (wikikpedia.org)

Now, you can understand what web analytics can do for you. This is a simple definition and it’s better for you to learn more intensive (if you want to be web analytics ninja, hehe) Web Analytics in my favourite books author of “Web Analytics 2.0″ and “Web Analytics An Hour A Day”, yeah, he is Avinash Kaushik (the co-Founder of Market Motive Inc and the Analytics Evangelist for Google). Now, many people, company, or organizations have a websites which used as an online media, promotion, personal branding, share information, etc. But there are many questions if you have website. How to manage our visitor data?which pages are viewed by visitors?how many times they visits our website?what, how, and many questions that you can’t learn without web analytics.

Google Analytics makes it easy for anyone managing a site to track and analyze this data. It’s a powerful, free tool that can answer a variety of questions for a wide range of users. Wondering which keywords resonate with visitors? Need insight on what design elements might be turning people away? (Mashable.com). Google Analytics (GA) is the most popular free web analytics now (and I’ve used GA in all of my website). Google Analytics is used by 57% of the 10,000 most popular websites (as ranked by Alexa Internet) ordered by popularity, as reported by (now defunct) BackendBattles.com Here are some steps how to setup Google Analytics into your website.

1. Add Tracking Code

First, I hope you have google account before you can setup Google Analytics. Yes, 1 account for all of amazing google technology and it’s why I am very interesting with Google. Visits www.google.com/analytics and then click on the “ACCESS ANALYTICS”. Sign in with your google accounts. If you’re first time using Google Analytics, you have to Create new accounts. Click on the top right of Accounts tab. And fill in the blanks for with your appropriate information of your website. See in the Figure 1 below:

Continue to the next step until you get your tracking code. See Figure 2 below:

Put the code in your index page (e.g index.php or index.html) before tag </head>. And then save your index page file. After embedding this code, your website is ready to be tracked by Google Analytics. Now, it’s show time!

2. Metric that you can Measure

There are many metrics that you can use for your insights. But, the global scope for your metrics are classified by google in some terms. They are Visitors, Traffic Sources, Content, and Goals. Futhermore, I want to explain these terms and how to implement them in another posts. So don’t worry about that. You can start to know about your visitor. Only visitors? No, there are many informations that you can get from this analytics. For visitors, you can get information about New Visitor vs. Returning Visitors, Visitor Loyalty, Language that visitor use, Visitor Browsers, and much more. Then, in the next analysis you can decide how to improve and optimize your website. (You can read about these in my web analytics recommended books above). These are a few informations that your can get (mashable.com):

• Visitors: This shows many things about the people coming to your site, including where they’re located geographically, what language they speak, how often they visit your site and what computers and browsers they use to get there.
• Traffic Sources: Here you’ll find how people got to your site. You can track which sites link to your page or keywords people search to find you.
• Content: This tab gives you insight into specific pages on your site. It can help answer questions about how people enter and exit your pages, as well as which ones are most popular.
• Goals: If you’re aiming for established objectives, reports in the Goals tab will be helpful to you. Here you’ll find data about desired actions from users, including downloads, registrations and purchases.
• Ecommerce: You’ll only need this tab if you’re selling items on your site as it houses all merchandise, transaction and revenue activity information.

3. Data Visualizations

This is the power of these analytics. It can show you about your data trends in realtime chart. In addition, you can see your visitor countries or continent which are visualized by maps. You can export these data into another format such as pdf, csv,tsv, or image. This powerful tools make easier for you in the future analysis of your website.

4. Web Analytics with Google Analytics for your visitor Insights.

Now, you have learnt about basic web analytics and start how to use it. Will you try your hand at Google Analytics? Which business questions might it help you answer? Start now using web analytics and try to analyze your visitor insights.

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