Creating your account- Google Analytics Essential Training

[Reyed Mia (Apprentice, DIU)]

Creating your account- Google Analytics Essential Training

- Now that we've taken a quick look at how Accounts work it's time to create one. You'll start by visiting google.com/analytics. And it'll bring you to a page similar to this. Now, I'll point out that Google changes its sign up forms and landing pages from time to time. So even if the page layout or form specifics are tweaked you shouldn't have any trouble following along. All the information should be about the same, regardless of the layout on the page. Now, as we go through the sign up process I'm not going to cover every single configuration. We'll just review the most common features that you'll want to start out with to customize Analytics for your business.

So we'll go ahead and start by choosing create an account, here in the upper right-hand corner of the window. It's here that Google wants us to Sign In with an existing Google account. Now this might be a bit confusing if you're not using any of Google's other services. There's a difference between a Google Account and an Analytics Account. Your Google Account is the umbrella. You'll use that to sign in to other services such as Gmail or AdWords. Your Analytics Account is the container for all the information we looked at earlier. Now I'm going to assume most of you already have a Google Account so you'll go ahead and proceed by signing in with it.

I do recommend that you use an Account associated with whatever you'll be setting up. So if you're registering Google Analytics for a business you might opt to use a Business Google Account versus a personal one. If you don't have a Google Account you can follow the prompts below after selecting Create an account, here, at the bottom of the screen. You'll need to verify your Account via Email or through a text message and then you'll arrive at the next step. I'm going to go ahead and Sign In with an existing Google Account. So first things first, Google's going to show you the three steps that we're going to take to get set up.

First, we'll Sign up for Google Analytics, we'll add our tracking code, and we'll learn about our audience. Now in this movie we're only going to cover the Sign up process. We'll talk about the tracking code in the following movie. So, we'll choose Sign up, here, on the right-hand side of the screen. First things first, we need to tell Google what we're tracking. Is is a Website or a Mobile app? I'm going to assume that you want to track a Website to start with, so we're going to follow down this path and leave Website selected. Next, Google's going to inform you of the Tracking Method.

And the Website Tracking Method uses what's called Universal Analytics and that's the Tracking ID that we're going to get later on. Next, we're going to provide an Account Name. And this is typically the name of your business. But feel free to name it whatever makes sense for your Account. And remember, the Account is going to contain properties which we set up next. First, we'll enter in our Website Name. Now, you can choose to enter in the Domain Name or a generic name for your Website. Whatever you enter here is strictly for your records.

It's not going to impact how Google gathers the data. I'll add The Landon Hotel, as that's the property that we're going to be setting up. And then we need to enter in our Website URL. And this is the actual Domain Name of the Website that you want to start tracking. I'm going to put www.landonhotel.com. And I will point out, here on the left-hand side there's a drop-down. And this allows you to choose between http and https. You want to confirm which version your Website is using.

If you are using https, and all of your pages are loading in https for your users, you want to select this version. If you're using http, you'll select this. Now some sites switch between them and that's okay. And in that situation just start with http. From here we need to choose the Industry Category that this data is being aggregated for. Now this is going to help Google provide some benchmarking for us. And benchmarking is really cool because what it does is allows us to look at how our site is performing against others in the same Category.

It's not going to show us the actual sites but it's going to give us some baseline information. This is actually really helpful so I recommend you choose a Category that closely matches what you're doing. In this case, The Landon Hotel is a hotel. I'll scroll down to see if this is an option. And I'll go ahead and choose Travel as I think that's most closely associated. From here you'll choose the Reporting Time Zone. You can choose the country and then next to that the actual Time Zone within that country.

In this case, I'm in the Pacific Time Zone so I'll leave that selected. From here Google's going to give you some options to check. This is all about Data Sharing and Data Sharing is all about the information that you're willing to give to Google. You can read the privacy policy which is linked in the first paragraph. Or you can learn more about these Data Sharing options by selecting Learn more, here, in the second paragraph. Now, I recommend leaving all of these checked. And mainly it's because you're going to get access to other agregate data, Technical support, and even marketing specialists that can help you along your journey.

As your Account grows these resources can become invaluable. But review them individually and if you'd like you can also check out how Google safeguards your data to get a full, complete picture of what's happening by leaving these checked. From here you'll choose Get Tracking ID. You'll need to agree to the Terms and Services Agreement, read through this, and then choose I Accept. And just like that we've set up our first Google Analytics Account. In the next movie we're going to talk about how to use the Tracking Info which you see on the screen.

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