Google Analytics (GA4)

Google Analytics

How to set up a Google Analytics Account

Create a Google Account
Setup a Property in the account
Setup a reporting view in the account
Install a tracking code

Google set up is very straightforward you just need to use a email address and follow the steps to verify like you would any new account setup.

Once verified and in we start to setup the accunt profile.

What are you tracking a Webiste or MobileApp?
You give the account a Name
The you enter a property name (this is the website property you can have many properties in an account)
You enter the website URL to track
Select the industry category
Reporting times zone (where are you located choos ethe correct timezone)

Then Data Sharing
I would set this all as opt in (google has these has recommended, and they are beneficial to you)

And thats it!

Tracking ID

Next we get the tracking ID but we will have to agree to some terms of service first. Once accepted you get your tracking ID.
This is the Global Site TAG ID code you will need to place on your website, it goes as the first item in the HEAD TAGs on every webpage on the site you wish to track.

Each property you set up will be given a unique Tracking ID

Google TAG Manager
Is google option to manage tags property without necessarily putting the TAG on your webiste pages. (useful if you have hundred or thousands of pages and no automated way to add the TAG).

There is a Google Demo account option within GA for you to see all the features of GA and how things work before you go live with your own property (website).

In Google Analytics you have an ADMIN Screen located under the sprocket icon bottom right on the screen, this will show 3 important lists to view.

Account: this is each account setup there is a drop down and if you have mutliple Accounts you can select which one you wish to see.
Property: this is the information for each property within the account
View: this is the information for all the website data collected.

Google Analytics Reports

- Customisation : Dashboards, Custom Reports, Saved Reports, Custom Alerts
- Real Time : Overview, Location, Traffic Sources, Content, Events, Conversion.
- Audience : Overview, Active Users, Audiences, User Explorer, Demographics, Interests, Geo, Behaviour, Technology, Mobile, Custom, Benchmarking, Users Flow.
- Behaviour : Overview, Behaviour flow, Site Content, Site Speed, Site Search, Events, Publisher, Experiements.
- Acquisition  : Channels, Treemaps, Sources/Medium, Referrals
- Conversion : Goals, Ecommerce, Multi Channel Funnels, Attribution

Each section can drill down further providing a very detailed view of what users use to visit your website, where they are from, the demographics, the pages being viewed, the time spent and if they click on any actions such a buy a product or service. You can see bounce rates, cost per click ratios, and compare your site to what others in the same inductry are achieving.

You can save reports and export them to build a offline presentation. (Data import for 3CMarketing)

When campaigns run make sure all acccounts in google for ads are linked to get a detailed view of what is working and costing.

How to Set Up Goal
Goals should be aligned with your Business these are your KPis (Key Performance Indicators). The settings for Goals can be found under the COG icon at the bottom of the main Google Anaytics front page. Located under the View Column on the right. You can create up to 20 goals per property. You dont have to have them all active and can set them on or off under recording in the Goals view.

Ideally you will alwats have one active goal for each property otherwise you won’t be getting the best results for your business.

So what can be goals that you can track in Google Analytics

- Form submissions
- Subscriptions
- Purchases
- Downloads
- Any interaction on your website can be a goal

Google provides some templates with common goal settings that you can add or you can create your own custom goal.
Goals have a decription and Goals have details

So for example if someone fills in a form on the site and that takes them to a thank you page you want to track the thank you page view.

If you select Custom Goal we get a Goal description

Here we can out in the Goal Name (Thank you Page), Google will assign a unique Goal ID each time one is created.

Then we set the Type

- Destination
- Duration
- Pages/Screens per session (web and mobile)
- Event
- Smart Goal

Click Continue for Goal Details

We selected Destination for a thank you page now we can put in the thank you page URL, google allows regular expressions and plain text. You dont neeed the full domain here as Gogole knows the domain its checking.

We can assign a value this is not a product pruchase value but a value to the Goal being tracked which gould be a domation for example

We can also add a funnel, this gives you the ability to check how they got there, by adding in the steps they took to the thank you page.   

Clicking verify will check the URL is correct over the last 7 day

Note: remember Funnels can be tracked in Google Analytics under Conversions: Funnel Visualisation

Duraton tracking: How long do people stay on the site, we put in a time variable to see how much time people spend on the site, you need to look at your audience over view for the 6 month or yearly average and set this above that so we can drill down on the users. You view this with Channels and see from where traffic is coming that stays the longest.

Pages/Screens per session: This is important to set up for a more detailed demographics understanding of who is using your site, for example if you look at the average Pages view over the previous 6 months or year you will have a figure 1, 2, 3 etc, In the Pages, Screen setting we want to track a goal greater than this average so for example if the averga is 1.5 page view we ideally want to track 3 or 4 page view in this Goal, this will then allow us to drill down in the demographics to see who is spending time on our site.

Event: click on button that triggers an action, for example it can be downloads, or a donate button. This also needs to be set up in TAG Manager. when setting the details we put in the Category Action from the TAG Manager we could use the action CLICK if its the only one to track.

Note: All Events can be viewed under Behaviour in the GA Dashboard.

We can see all Goals and how they are converting under Conversions.

Another important view for Goals and Conversion tracking is the Multi-Channel Funnels reports and the Assisted Conversions, this will show where traffic has come from that assisted in the conversion imagine a footballer passing the ball to a team mate who scores the goal. You can select Top Conversion Paths which will show the path for the Goal and Conversion.

How set up Event Tracking in GA

Events tracking can be found under behaviours TOP EVENTS but for this to be poulated with useful data we need to set up what Events we want to track. Our first step is to identify what we want to track and why. We will probably have a dozen things we want to track from buttons clicked, signups, social redirects.

So lets use a single signup button. We have to assign to parameters for this; these are Category and Action.
If you have a pop up modal box or a side box you set this as a category i.e sideboxsignup for example, and the Action is Click.
Now we need to set things up in Google TAG Manager.
For every event you want to set up you will set up a TAG. So in TAG Manager we will select TAGS and NEW to begin creating a TAG, We will be selecting, TAG Configuration and selecting the Platform for the TAG in this case GA universal.
Now we are in TAG Configuration for the GA platform, we select what type of tracking we want in this case EVENT, now we have the Category and Actions field we need to fill in. We can also assign a optional label and value here as well. Enter the Category sideboxsignup and the Action is CLICK.
We then have Non-Interaction Hit which is set to False, we need to leave this to FALSE. Then we set the GA setting which should be prefilled to your account.
So that’s the TAG setup.

Note: if you use label and enter the variable {{Page Path}} this will track the page that the signupbox was shown and the user clicked, so if this signup box is on mutliple pages you can track which page they were on when they clicked.

Now we set TRIGGERING what is triggering this event
In this case Trigger type is CLICK. Note: we do have a drop down of options for different types of triggers.

You can use Preview to test TAGs

You can also test all actions using realtime in analytics under Events.

If it doesn’t appear to complete the Action then you need to look at the trigger options and tweak them

If you are setting up more than one trigger and what to keep track of them, you can use a spreasheet for this,
Column titles: Notes: Implementation: TAG Name: Type: Category: Action: Label: Goal for example.

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