Google analytics account setup optimization

GOOGLE ANALYTICS ACCOUNT SETUP & OPTIMIZATION CHECKLIST
Google Analytics is awesome. Just sign up for an account, put some code on your
site, and you’re analyzing traffic in minutes!
And therein lies the problem...
The problem with the default Google Analytics installation settings is that it’s too
easy!
With Google’s one-size-fits-all solution for tracking, you can get data in minutes.
But using a solution designed to report on the same data for every website on the
internet isn’t likely to provide you with the insights you need to improve your
marketing.
This guide and checklist are designed to help you create a plan that customizes your
Google Analytics account for your website’s needs. By customizing your Google
Analytics installation, you can turn your Google Analytics account into a high-value
data-driven machine that provides you with the information you need to take action
and improve your marketing.
That sounds pretty great, doesn’t it?
WWW.DATADRIVENU.COM COPYRIGHT © 2020 DIGITAL MANTIS, INC.
HOW TO USE THIS GUIDE AND CHECKLIST
There are three sections to this guide, covering beginner, intermediate and
advanced topics.
The beginner steps cover best practices that all Google Analytics users, at every
level, should follow.
The intermediate level steps are necessary to customize your Google Analytics
account and get better data in your reports. These steps may be challenging for
brand new Google Analytics users. That’s why within this guide, we have linked to
many other resources that will help further your understanding of these techniques.
The advanced steps are most appropriate for certified Google Analytics
professionals or users who are very confident in their skills.
Ready to turn your Google Analytics account into a customized business solution?
Let’s get started!

BEGINNER LEVEL STEPS
These steps are for beginners in Google Analytics and will apply to every user situation.
No matter your level of Google Analytics expertise, you should be able to accomplish
the following tasks.
Step 1: Define the objective of your website
Blogging (More Pageviews)
E-commerce (More Sales)
Lead generation (More Leads)
Affiliate (More Commissions)
Advertising (More Pageviews)
Informational (More Pageviews)
Membership (More Sales/Customer
Satisfaction)
The objective of my website is to:
Step 2: Create a free Google/Google Analytics account if you don’t already have one
Create a free Google Account (This is required to set up Google Analytics).
Create a free Google Analytics account using your Google Account.
Create a property and view for your primary domain name to be tracked with
Google Analytics. Any account name will work. You can always change your
account name later.
DO NOT install the tracking code yet!

Step 3: Identify which users will have access to your analytics account and at what level
of access to provide them
Edit Permission: This permission allows users to make substantial changes to your
account like adding and removing filters, adding and editing goals, deleting views
and properties, and much more. It is recommended that you only provide this
permission level to Google Analytics certified users.
Collaborate: This permission allows users to view reports and also view shared
assets like dashboards and annotations within the account.
Read & Analyze: This permission allows users to view reports and perform analysis
for any account, property, or view they are assigned.
Manage Users: This permission allows users to provide account access to other
users. It is recommended you limit this privilege to 2-3 people within your account.
It is always a good idea to have at least two people with manage users access, in
case one member leaves your organization.
The following people have access to the Google Analytics Account
User Name/Email Permission Level

Step 4: Create a preliminary tagging and tracking plan
List the assets on your site you need to track with Google Analytics. Examples: key
website pages, shopping cart pages, etc.
List file downloads that you would like to track inside Google Analytics. Examples:
files like PDFs, apps, etc.
List any on-page events you would like to track. Examples: video views, form
interactions, button clicks, etc.
Does this site need e-commerce tracking?
List the key conversion points of your website. Examples: thank you pages, account
signups, newsletters, lead captures, etc.
The following pages must be tracked with Google Analytics
Page Name Page Type

Step 5: Identify how you will install the Google Analytics tracking code
Manually adding code to your site: Many content management systems will allow
you to do this with a code editor that places scripts in your site <header>.
*Preferred* Google Tag Manager (GTM): Google Tag Manager allows you to add
tracking tags for multiple analytics, paid media, and audience measurement tools in
one interface. It is our preferred method for putting Google Analytics on your site.
Plugin for your Content Management system: Most modern Content Management
systems allow you to add Google Analytics with a single click in their interface.
Simply enter your tracking ID (i.e. UA-XXXXXX-1) and they will handle the rest. This
is very convenient for beginners but does sacrifice advanced functionality.
Step 6: Identify how many unique domain names/properties you would like to manage
within your account
Note: One Website domain or Mobile App you want to track = one property. If you
want to link multiple domains in one property, you will need to utilize cross-domain
tracking to display properly. Please see more advanced sections for reference.
I track the following domains within this Google Analytics Account
Domain Name/ Property

INTERMEDIATE LEVEL STEPS
These setup steps are best reserved for intermediate and advanced level Google
Analytics users.
Step 7: Identify the KPIs you need to track within Google Analytics
Potential KPIs: Total pageviews, sessions by source/medium, top landing pages, top
organic keywords, page value, time on page, goal conversions.
If you want to customize your Google Analytics reports to focus on your most critical
success metrics, then you need to know which data points are most important to your
objectives. Let’s use some of our example website objectives from Step 1 to define
potential KPIs for each objective.
If your objective is pageviews/traffic:
Potential KPIs: Total revenue, e-commerce conversion rate, page value, conversion
rate by source/medium, sales by product category, return on ad spend (ROAS),
conversion rate by gender/age and interest category, conversion rate by external
campaign name.
If your objective is e-commerce/sales:
Potential KPIs: Goal conversions, conversions rate by landing page, page value,
conversion rate by source/medium, conversion rate by gender/age and interest
category, contact form submissions by landing page.
If your objective is lead generation:
Potential KPIs: Outbound clicks per landing page, conversion rate by content group,
page value, traffic by source/medium, top landing pages, top external links clicked
by page.
If your objective is affiliate programs/commission based programs:
Write down the KPIs that are most important to your website’s objective.

The KPIs I need to track are
Step 8: Create views to reflect Google Analytics best practices
Main Reporting View: A view that includes filters to block internal website traffic
(traffic generated by you, your team, and/or other people working on your website).
You will also want to block bot traffic from showing up in this view. This view must
also have goals configured to maximize the value of your analytics reports.
Unfiltered View: A view that does not use any filters or prevent any data from
entering your reporting interface. This view is necessary for diagnosing data
discrepancies or anomalies in your main reporting view and allows you to
troubleshoot data integrity issues.
The purpose of Google Analytics views are to protect the integrity of your analytics
data, control access to reports, and to improve your reporting capabilities. At a
minimum, your account should have the following views in place for each of your
properties.

Step 9: Enable the features you need at an account level
Test View: A view to test filters and new data collection methods before you apply
them in your main reporting view. You do not want to obscure your primary
reporting view data with experimental filters, so be sure to apply filters to a test
view first.
Review the following account settings and apply them as needed.
Google Products and services (recommended): You’ll need to turn on this setting to
link to other Google products (like GTM, of Google Ads, etc.) with your account.
This setting is also necessary to if you want to enable Google Search Console.
Benchmarking (recommended): This setting allows you to use anonymous data to
compare your website to other sites in your industry.
Technical support (optional): You need to enable this feature to allow Google to
provide you with technical support.
Account Specialist (optional): This setting needs to be turned on if you work with a
Google Analytics account specialist. Support from account specialist can be critical
if you have a Google Ads representative.
Step 10: Enable your demographic reports (if available)
If you want Google Analytics to collect and report on data about the age, gender, or
interests of your audience, then you’ll need to enable demographics. You’ll also need to
enable this feature to create remarketing or audience lists in Google Analytics.
Enable Demographic and interest reports.
Adjust your privacy policy accordingly.
Adjust your cookie consent policy to comply with GDPR as needed.

Step 11: Which products do you need to link to your Google Analytics account?
Check off all the Google products you need to link with your Analytics account.
Google Ads
Google Optimize and Tag Manager
Search Console
AdSense
Ad Exchange
BigQuery
Display and video 360
Campaign Manager
Search Ads 360
Google Play
Postbacks
Step 12: Adjust your data retention settings
The default data retention setting in Google Analytics is 26 months. If you do not adjust
this setting, Google will dump your user data after 26 months. Select a data retention
setting:
14 months
26 months
36 months
50 months
Do not automatically expire
What should you use for a data retention setting? We recommend keeping data
only as long as needed to perform historical analysis on your analytics data. For
some businesses, the default of 26 months is sufficient. For long-term business
needs, you may choose a longer time period.

Step 13: Put filters in place
At a minimum, we recommend adding the following filters to your Test View (see Step #
8) and eventually adding them to your main reporting view in Google Analytics.
Bot filtering (Filter known bots in your view settings to exclude all hits from known
bots and spiders): Turning on this filter is as simple as checking a box in your view
settings. Google’s built-in bot filter will help you block most known unwanted and
spam traffic from your account. But please note that this filter is not guaranteed to
block all the junk traffic that enters your reports. So at some point, you may need
to create more precise filters to keep your reports clean.
Internal traffic filter (by IP Address or ISP Domain): This filter will help you block all
website hits from people working at your company, based on their IP address. To
block your entire organization (and yourself), you can use a more powerful ISP
filter.
Step 14: Create and verify your goals inside of Google Analytics
After you establish the objectives of your website in Step #1, you can train Google
Analytics to recognize the positive actions that occur on your site using goals. You can
set up goals based on several user activities on your website, with the most common
goal being a destination goal.
The goals available are: Destination, Event, Pages/Screen, Duration
You are allowed up to 20 goals. What goals do you plan to track in Google Analytics?
Google Analytics goals are set up
I am going to set up the following goals in Google Analytics
Goal Name Goal Type

Step 15: Create an event tracking plan
Check off the events you need to track
Blog posts: You can use scroll tracking to see how far your visitors read down your
pages.
Videos: You can use video view tracking to see how often, and how much of your
video your visitors view.
Downloads: You can use link click tracking to record event data in Google Analytics
when visitors access your downloadable content.
Form tracking: You can use form tracking to record when your visitors fill out or
submit information in your lead generation or contact forms.
Outbound link tracking: You can use link click tracking to track clicks on outbound
links from your site.
Step 16: Set up campaign tracking
Add UTM codes to your email, PPC, social media, and referral links so that you can
track all your outbound marketing efforts in Google Analytics. (Use our full
campaign tracking guide and checklist).
Enable auto-tagging for your campaigns if you’re using Google Ads.
Don’t see an event listed? Define additional events here.
The following events need to be set up in Google Analytics:

Step 17: Verify your tracking code is firing properly
Install the Google Tag Assistant browser extension for Chrome.
Check that tags are firing with no errors.
Advanced: If you are not seeing the results you expect, install and run the Google
Analytics Debugger Chrome extension.
ADVANCED LEVEL STEPS
These tasks represent an advanced understanding of Google Analytics. It is highly
recommended that these tasks are only performed by Google Analytics certified
individuals.
Step 18: Map your E-commerce tracking plan
My company is using Google Analytics to track an e-commerce website.
Enable e-commerce in view that will track transactions.
Implement the e-commerce tracking code for standard e-commerce websites and
verify it is collecting data correctly.
Enable enhanced e-commerce in a view requiring enhanced e-commerce
functionality.
Map out all actions to be tracked by enhanced e-commerce.
Implement enhanced e-commerce code on your website and verify it is collecting
data correctly.

Step 19: Create an automated reporting dashboard in Google Analytics or Google Data
Studio to track most critical KPIs
Import or create a custom dashboard in Google Analytics to track your most
important KPIs using the Google Analytics.
OR
Connect your Google Analytics account to Google Data Studio to create a more
advanced dashboard.
Step 20: Set up custom content groupings as needed
Use the steps in our content grouping guide and checklist to set up this feature in
your account.
Step 21: Set up custom channel grouping as needed
Use the steps in our channel grouping guide to set up this feature in your account.
Step 22: Build advanced segments to keep track of KPIs as needed
Create advanced segments for key visitor segments.
Step 23: Link your Google Analytics account with other Google products
Maximize the effectiveness of Google Analytics by sharing data between Google
products. Check off all the Google products you have successfully linked with your
Analytics account.

Step 24: Utilize custom dimensions and metrics in Google Analytics
Plot your custom dimensions and metrics
Decide scope of each dimension and metric (product, hit, session, user)
Define custom dimensions/metrics inside Google Analytics property settings
Tag your site to populate these custom values for each visitor
Google Ads
Google Optimize and Tag Manager
Search Console
AdSense
Ad Exchange
BigQuery
Display and video 360
Campaign Manager
Search Ads 360
Google Play
Postbacks
To make analysis in Google Analytics more effective, you can create and populate
custom dimensions and metrics. These customizations make analysis easier, allow you to
bring external data into GA, and make Google Analytics speak your language. Each
property can have 20 custom dimensions and 20 custom metrics.
Step 25: Create an experiment with Google Optimize
Create and launch your first experiment
Plot the areas that could use improvement
Google Optimize is an enterprise quality A/B split testing system within Google
Analytics. If you want to improve your conversion rates, consider running an experiment
with Google Optimize.

Create a test plan for what can be improved, and how
Add the experiment into Google Optimize
Conduct experiment and review results

Google analytics account setup optimization

More Related Content

What's hot (20)

Similar to Google analytics account setup optimization (20)

More from DAVID RAUDALES (16)

Recently uploaded (20)

Google analytics account setup optimization