Google Analytics is a great, free tool from Google. It gives you a friendly and easy to use overview on the performance of your website.  You can find out how many visitors, where they originated from, what pages they look at, how long they stay and which page they last looked at (amongst other things!)

We now recommend all our customers, prospects and friends use Google Analytics!  But, there is still some confusion as to where you put the analytics code.  To clear this up….All you have to do to start using it is set yourself up with a Google Account (you may already have one), turn on Analytics and copy some code into your website.

To get going, visit www.google.co.uk/analytics

If you have a ‘static’ website which is made up of .htm or .html pages you have to copy a small amount of code into each page.
It only takes a few seconds to do, and remember the following:

• Put it at the END of the page, just before the closing body tag </body> – this ensures that your page loading isn’t slowed down by the tracking code

• Only put ONE set of code per page – this is particular important to know as there are two sets of code you can copy from Google Analytics – go with the more recent version

• Remember to put the code in EVERY page you want to track – otherwise you will be missing out on valuable data

This last point leads to a common misconception.

If you have a ‘dynamic’ website – i.e. one where the content is drawn from a database (perhaps because it is a content managed system) then you only need to copy the code into the main page and only that one page.
I know this because all our sites are content managed, and we only have to copy the code into one place –  into the template.
However, you don’t even have to take my word for it, the Google Help Center says on the matter:

“Database driven sites – Insert the tracking code on your index.php page or equivalent (e.g. default.php, index.cfm)”

Click here to read the help topic.

So, what are you waiting for, get Google Analytics fired up on your site today and find out out well it’s performing tomorrow!

If you already have Google Analtyics running on your website, you may be interested in our Google Analytics for Breakfast seminars being held in Thame, Oxfordshire – next one Friday 12th September.  For more information, visit www.solve-the-web.co.uk/google_analytics

Cat Young

Solve the Web
www.solve-the-web.co.uk