Google Analytics, a free service of Google, provides a world of statistical information that can help you manage and plan for your site better. Your site data is collected on a daily basis and is displayed against data for your site over the past month.

The data collected is just amazing. For starters, on the first screen, the Dashboard, you can see an overview chart of the month with numbers of visits, pageviews, and pages per visit, bounce rate, average time on the site, and percentage of new visits. Also there’s a visitors overview chart with numbers of visitors, a world chart showing where your visitors are coming from, a chart showing traffic sources, and an overview of which pages on your site are most popular.

You can compare statistics with the new Advanced Segments, check your site against the average statistics of sites of your size with Benchmarks, view the search terms that brought readers to your site… the list goes on and on. Each of the (and more) elements on the Dashboard can be drilled down into to discover an incredible amount of information about your site.

Needless to say, Google Analytics is a must-have tool to have! Getting a Google Analytics account is easy to do, and Thesis makes incorporating it into your site a snap.

Setting up Google Analytics

In your browser, go to Google Analytics.

Screen 1: Press the “Access Analytics” button or sign up for a new account. If you do not have a Google account, you will be lead through the steps of creating one. If you already have a Google Analytics account, choose “Create New Account” from the pulldown on the upper right.

Screen 2: Click the “Sign Up for Google Analytics” button.

Screen 3: Fill in your site’s URL, name the account, choose a country and time zone. Click continue.

Screen 4: Fill in your name, phone number, and country. Click continue.

Screen 5: Read and agree to terms of service.

Screen 6: Copy the tracking code. I suggest you create a document and save this tracking code in case you ever need to access it again. Click continue.

Screen 7: If everything’s ok, you should see the Overview Screen.

Putting the tracking code into your footer scripts: Without a plugin

The Google Analytics script you copied on screen 6 above needs to go into the footer in every screen. With Thesis, it’s easy to set this up:
1. From the Admin Panel, go to Appearance, then Thesis Options
2. In the left hand column find “Stats Software and Scripts” then “Footer Scripts”
3. Paste the tracking code here and save.

Putting the tracking code into your footer scripts: Using the Google Analytics for WordPress plugin

1. Note the Analytics number assigned to you in the overview screen (screen 7, above). It starts with a “UA-”. It will also be in the tracking code you copied in the line:

 var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-0000000-1");

2. From the Admin Panel, go to Plugins, then click on Google Analytics
3. Paste your Analytics ID into the “Analytics Account ID” box, then update settings.

And finally…

Remember that it takes time to build up Google Analytics history. Your first overview screen will show no visits, no matter how popular your site is. The Google Analytics data for your site is updated once a day, so today’s data will be shown tomorrow and kept for a month.

There are lots of places to learn how to use Google Analytics data. Start with the official Google Analytics Help page. Measuring Success has a great page with links to many Analytics learning sites. And then there’s always Google search itself, which shows thousands of pages for the search terms “Google Analytics Help.”

I hope this article has been clear and easy to follow. Please feel free to leave a comment, or to email me using the “Contact” tab.

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Tags: , Google Analytics, Setup, Thesis

Tagged as: Google Analytics, Setup, Thesis