3.5 minute read: How Google Analytics works, and what it can (and can’t) do for you. Two important things to remember. Lesson 1 of 6.

To understand how to get meaningful information out of Google Analytics, there are two basic things you need to understand about this amazing tool.

The first is what, exactly, Google Analytics (and Universal Analytics) actually are.

Google Analytics is some code placed on your website that tracks visitors anonymously to your web-based account.

Sounds simple, and it is. But let’s break down what this means for what the tool can and can’t do, and how to use it most effectively.

‘… some code placed on your website’
A simple Google Analytics tracking code must be placed on every page of your website that you want tracked. Every time the page is loaded, the code is activated and sends a lot of information about the visitor to your Google Analytics account: time of visit, browser type, language settings, country, city, computer operating system etc. etc.etc. – the list is really long.

This also means that you can only track pages that have your specific code properly installed: if any pages of your site are missing the code, or there are errors in the code, you won’t be able to get information on visits to those pages.

And of course you can’t track other websites that you can’t place the tracking code on.

‘… tracks visitors anonymously’
As mentioned before, Google Analytics records a lot of very detailed information about your site visitors to your account. But it does all this anonymously, meaning that it doesn’t record any personally identifiable information about your visitors to your account.

For instance, you can tell that someone from Topeka, Kansas visited your website on July 7th with an iPhone, that they came from a search on Google for “fun things to do in Topeka” and they visited 9 pages (including your shopping cart) before leaving your site after 14 minutes.

What you can’t find out from your account is that persons’ name, email address or phone number – even if they entered it on your site. (The Google Analytics terms of service that you agree to expressly forbid you from modifying Google Analytics to track this information)

‘… your web-based account’
This is the simplest concept of all: you log in online to access your Google Analytics data, just like you do for Gmail, Facebook or Twitter. The data is accessible to anyone with your login details (username and password) and an internet connection. This means you can access this information from anywhere in the world, and give people access to your Google Analytics account data.

To recap:

Someone visits your website (or mobile app) and the Google Analytics tracking code on each page they visit sends a lot of anonymous information about that visit to your Google Analytics account, which you (and people you share your account with) can access online.

Simple.

This setup has a few implications that are important to understand and remember in order to get the most from Google Analytics.

Google Analytics overloads you with data: your job is to focus
An avalanche of detailed data is recorded to your Google Analytics account, and only a small fraction of it will help you improve your online results. It is so easy to get confused and overwhelmed by the all the data generated, and it’s difficult to figure out what to pay attention to and what you can ignore. This tutorial is all about helping you focus on the useful information and ignore the distracting data.

Google Analytics will only record what you set it up to record
Once you have the tracking code on every page of your website, you will be recording a lot of useful data to your account. But in most cases, there are a few more installation steps that need to be taken to get really useful, actionable information from Google Analytics.

These modifications take the form of simple tweaks to your tracking code, small changes to the code that runs your website, and configuration of your account to track the data that will give you the most insight.

Google Analytics gives you a lot with a simple “out-of-the-box” installation, but the really powerful insights come with a bit of customization to your account. This tutorial will explain the why (and a bit of the how) of these modifications to your Google Analytics setup. This tutorial is for non-technical people, so we won’t be getting into heavy jargon or coding – we’ll keep it simple.

This leads us back to the importance of focus when using Google Analytics.

Google Analytics is the most helpful when you focus on the most relevant, actionable data in your account and ignore the deluge of interesting but ultimately useless (to you right now) data.

To achieve this focus you need to adopt some key data habits we’re going to explore in this tutorial, including

• recording conversions as goals,
• tracking your email and social media outreach and
• segmenting your visitors.

Don’t worry if these terms don’t make sense to you right now, they will by the end of these tutorials.

Continue to the first lesson, Why do you have a website?

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