Creyn » GoogleAnalytics http://blog.creyn.pl Programmer's notes Mon, 22 Aug 2016 07:00:21 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.0.38 How to add Google Analytics to WordPress blog, part 2: configure blog http://blog.creyn.pl/2016/06/13/how-to-add-google-analytics-to-wordpress-blog-part-2-configure-blog/ http://blog.creyn.pl/2016/06/13/how-to-add-google-analytics-to-wordpress-blog-part-2-configure-blog/#comments Mon, 13 Jun 2016 21:00:39 +0000 http://blog.creyn.pl/?p=496 This is the second post from the series about adding the “Google Analytics” to the “WordPress” blog. In the first post (http://blog.creyn.pl/2016/06/07/how-to-add-google-analytics-to-wordpress-blog-part-1-registration/) we have registered to the “Google Analytics” service and acquired a new “Tracking ID” for our blog. Now we have to configure our blog to include that “Tracking ID” on every page that we want to have analytics on. This actually means that we will add it to all of our pages and posts.

So let’s go to the second step: Configure blog with the Tracking ID.

Step 2: Configure blog

In the first step, on the “Google Analytics” website (https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/#management/Settings > “Tracking Info” > “Tracking Code”), right next to the “Tracking ID” we’ve found a “Tracking Script” that could be used to configure our blog.

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For blogs hosted on the https://wordpress.com/ there is an instruction how to enable the “Google Analytics” and how to properly configure it. You can find it here: https://en.support.wordpress.com/google-analytics/.

My blog is a so called “self hosted” version. This is an installation on a hosting platform that I paid for and have more controll over my blog. There are many ways to put the tracking code on every webpage. There are many plugins to do it. I decided to try a simple one that inserts snippets of source code in the header and the footer on each webpage. As I didn’t have it before, I had to install it from the “WordPress” plugins repository. If you want to follow, please go to the “Plugins > Add New” section and look for the “Header and Footer” plugin. The search engine should return many similar plugins but this is the most popular one and has the 5 star score. After installing it, we can find it in the “Settings > Header and Footer” section.

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From the screenshoot below you can see that it is very customizable and has many options for inserting snippets of code on dfferent pages. I’ve choosen the “<HEAD> Section Injection” which inserts code on “Every” page of my blog.  Here you have to paste the auto generated “Tracking Script” from the “Google Analytics” website.

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After this is done we could check if the setup is correct. First go to one of your blog posts and then open the “View page source” from the browser (you can press Ctrl+U on the keyboard, it should work in most browsers). You can now see that the script was succesfully inserted on my “Fog in Warsaw” blog post.

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On the “Google Analytics” reporting page (here: https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web) we can also see that the script is working and the statistics are send to Google. Please go to the “Reporting > Real Time > Conversions“. In my case there is already one visitor showing in this report.

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The reports in other reporting sections are shown with some delay and can not be shown from the very beginning. But it will be there tomorrow. Now we could start promote our blog posts and see which one is the most popular.

To sum up, I already had the “Jetpack” plugin statistics for my “WordPress” blog but I have the feeling that they are very simple and I hope that the “Google Analytics” will give me much more insight into my visitors preferences. We’ll see. And as it turned out, adding GA to my blog was very easy.

C.

]]> http://blog.creyn.pl/2016/06/13/how-to-add-google-analytics-to-wordpress-blog-part-2-configure-blog/feed/ 0 How to add Google Analytics to WordPress blog, part 1: registration http://blog.creyn.pl/2016/06/07/how-to-add-google-analytics-to-wordpress-blog-part-1-registration/ http://blog.creyn.pl/2016/06/07/how-to-add-google-analytics-to-wordpress-blog-part-1-registration/#comments Tue, 07 Jun 2016 14:00:54 +0000 http://blog.creyn.pl/?p=437 In this short series of posts I will show you how to enable the “Google Analytics” statistics on your blog. I am writing about the “WordPress” blog but this could be easilly adopted for any other blog platform and static websites that you have. The “Google Analytics“ is a platform that gives a very detailed insight in the statistics of the traffic on a website. It is usefull to have more knowledge about your users, their preferences and which content of your blog is the most popular. After all you probably write a blog for someone to read and maybe you should consider writing more posts about what your readers are looking for when comming to your site.

In this post I’ll focus on the first step that is needed: Registration to the “Google Analytics“.

Step 1: Register

For the “Google Analytics” the registration process is actually very simple and it is summarized on this graphic below:

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First you will need a “Google” account. I assume you have one already or know how to register for a new one. Then you need to go to the page: https://www.google.com/analytics/ and login using that account. When logged in you need to go trought a very simple wizard process that helps you create and configure the account.

First step is choosing if the setup will be for a Mobile App or a Website. In case of a blog let’s choose the “Website” option. Then you have to set an “Account Name” and “Website Name“. Those are for you to differentiate with some other analytics that you might want to have (for example a second blog or some static websites). The “Website URL” is the URL of your blog. You can copy paste the URL from your blog homepage address (like I did here). The “Industry Category” section will help Google to prepare some basic raports for you. The last thing is to choose the “Reporting Zone Time“. You can choose you country and all reports will be properly recalculated to your timezone.

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Next thing is to allow Google to gather and share some statistics to help them to imrove their service. I allowed for all of them. And after clicking “Get Tracking ID” and accepting some “Terms of Service Agreement” you will be send to a new website and the “Tracking ID” will be generated for you.

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The “Tracking ID” is very important. This is an identificator that allows Google to track users on your website. Below the “Tracking ID” is a section with the JavaScript code. You can just copy paste it on the web page that you want to have tracking enabled. In my case, I want to put it on every page on my blog.

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How to do it I will show you in the next post. For now you could play around with the nice “Google Analytics” website. They have many video tutorials and informations about each report. Even a quick look at the available options will give you the idea of the things you can learn about your visitors. And there are a lot of them.

C.

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