2 June 2022

An Introduction to Google Analytics and How to Use It

Google Analytics is the most popular digital analytics tool. It’s easy to start collecting data in your reports. However, the real value of Google Analytics is unlocked when you start applying your data to improve your website and your business. While the default reports provide quick insights, it can feel overwhelming when you begin to customize your implementation. Today we’re going to cover the basics of Google Analytics.

What do people do on your website? Which marketing channels are bringing people to your website? What is your most popular and engaging content? Are people converting?

Google Analytics can answer these questions and more.

What is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics is a digital analytics measurement and reporting platform. It’s designed to automatically collect details about the most important actions people take on your website, like viewing pages, but it also has a flexible data model that can be used to collect custom information for additional insights.

Google created it to help businesses of all sizes understand how people find and use their websites. It was also the first comprehensive analytics platform available for free, and it continues to be the most widely adopted tool for measuring websites.

How does Google Analytics work?

Google Analytics relies on cookies to measure and report the number of people who visit your website. Cookies are small pieces of information stored in your browser. The Google Analytics cookies contain pseudo-anonymous identifiers to distinguish users. Google Analytics collects information contained in the cookie, combines it with other details, and then sends it to Google’s servers, where data is processed into your reports.

The new version of Google Analytics, called Google Analytics 4 or GA4, still relies on cookies, but Google has said they’ve designed it to work without cookies. Details of how this will work are still scarce, but it seems likely that the Google Analytics tag will collect basic details, which can then be used for modeled data in reports.

So today, Google Analytics mainly uses a combination of JavaScript tracking code and cookies to identify and report on unique individuals and their behavior. However, we’re likely to see this shift to include cookie-less tracking and other technologies like Google Signals to understand how people engage online.

How to setup Google Analytics

Getting started with Google Analytics is easy. Simply visit Google’s Marketing Platform website, and click the button to get started. You'll be asked to log in to your Google account.

Next, you will need to name your Google Analytics account and enter details about your website. You will then be prompted to install the tracking code on your website. I generally recommend using Google Tag Manager, but most website platforms let you enter the ‘Measurement ID’ (or ‘Tracking ID’) to get up and running.

As soon as the tracking code is installed, Google Analytics will collect information about people visiting your website. You can then use the pre-configured reports and build custom reports to understand how users find and engage with your website.

What reports can you get from Google Analytics?

Google Analytics 4 includes several default reports you can use to understand the performance of your website. You can also customize the default reports and create your own ‘Exploration’ reports for additional flexibility. Here are a few examples of reports you will find in Google Analytics:

1. Acquisition Reports

The acquisition reports include details about how people find your website. By default, the reports show you the ‘Default Channel Grouping’, which gives you a top-level view. For example, all of your free traffic from Google and other search engines will be listed as ‘Organic Search’ in the reports. Apart from this top-level view, you can adjust the reports to show you more granular details, including the individual source and medium combinations people use to find your website.

2. Engagement Reports

The engagement reports include details about the pages people have viewed on your website, along with other events that have been collected. If you’ve configured conversions, you can see the total number of conversions and revenue for the events being sent to Google Analytics.

3. Monetization Reports

Once you’ve implemented ecommerce tracking, you will be able to see details about the products people have purchased in the monetization reports. Depending on your website, you can also adjust your implementation to send details about the number of times people add items to their cart, begin the checkout process, etc.

4. Demographics Reports

The demographics reports let you understand the geographic location of your audience members and their language preferences. If you’ve enabled Google Signals, you will also see details about their age, gender, and areas of interest (which also align with the targeting options available in Google Ads).

5. Technology Reports

You can report on the devices people are using to access your website using the technology reports. This includes the browsers, operating systems, screen resolutions, and more. While these reports aren’t particularly useful at a top-level, when you look at engagement, conversion, and ecommerce metrics, they can help you pinpoint potential usability and conversion issues for your users.

6. Advertising Reports

The attribution reports can be found by navigating to ‘Advertising’ in Google Analytics 4. These reports show you the different marketing touchpoints people engage with before converting on your website. This provides a more holistic view of your marketing efforts.

What is the best way to learn Google Analytics?

To start, I recommend watching our Google Analytics tutorial, which will take you through the steps to set up Google Analytics, how to start using the reports, and customization options.

You will also find more articles covering Google Analytics on the Loves Data Blog, and subscribe to our YouTube channel for the latest updates and tutorials.

Conclusion

Google Analytics is a powerful and robust digital analytics tool. Understanding how people engage with your website can help you improve the experience you deliver to your prospects and customers. For example, you can identify bottlenecks to conversion, improve navigation, and create more compelling content for your audience.

When you’re ready to learn more about the platform, we offer a comprehensive Google Analytics course to take your practical skills and knowledge to the next level. You will learn how to configure Google Analytics and use your reports.