Google has many valuable free resources for you as an online business owner that you need to take advantage of. This includes Gmail, Google Analytics, Google+, YouTube, Google Drive, and more.
If you don’t have a Google account already, go to https://accounts.google.com/signup and enter in the requested information. This will allow you to sign up for and use services such as Gmail, Google Analytics, and more.
Once you have a Google Account, head over to http://www.google.com/analytics/, click on “Sign In” in the upper-right corner, click “Analytics,” then click the “Sign Up” button on the right side. You’ll then be taken to a page where you can choose to track a website or a mobile app. You input the account name and the name and the URL of the website or the name of the app you wish to track, along with the industry category and reporting time zone.
You then choose the “Data Sharing Settings” options you wish to use at the bottom of the page, including “Google products & services,” “Benchmarking,” “Technical support,” and “Account specialists.” By using these options, you will have more control over sharing your Google Analytics data. When you are finished, click the “Get Tracking ID” button at the bottom of the page.
This Tracking ID code will be placed onto your website or into your app’s source code so that Google can track how many people visit your Web pages or install and use your business’ app. Over a period of time, you will get useful data on the visitors that come to your site or install and use your app, information that can help you to tweak your marketing campaigns and messages in order to gain better engagement from your visitors, gain more subscribers to your list, and get more people to purchase your offers.
Note that you can use up to 100 Google Analytics accounts, and each account can contain up to 50 properties. “Properties” refer to the site or app you are tracking, meaning you can track up to a total of 50 sites or apps per Google Analytics account. Thus, you can track up to a grand total of 5,000 sites or apps via all of your allotted Google Analytics accounts.
Therefore, if you plan to utilize many accounts and/or properties in Google Analytics, be sure to use descriptive names for those accounts and properties to easily differentiate between them at a glance. By using descriptive names, you don’t have to click in and out of accounts and properties to determine which accounts hold which properties and which properties have the specific site or app data you are looking for. Organization is key to getting the most useful information from Google Analytics.
Note that as the main account holder, you also have the capability of adding other authorized users to your Google Analytics accounts and to any property in any of your accounts. This feature can be quite useful later on if you utilize virtual assistants or hire employees or partners in your company and want them to have access to your site or app data.