How To Create A Google Analytics Account

Google Analytics Video Transcript

Alright, we’re going to be creating a new google analytics account and installing a Google Analytics tracking code here on our test website.

To get started you’re going to want to head over to analytics.google.com.

In order to create a Google Analytics account you need to have an existing Google account.  If you don’t already have a Google account, you can create one by clicking “Create Account” and entering your information.  

Once you sign into your Google account or create a new Google account, you will be brought to this page.

You can go ahead and click “Start measuring”.

From here you need to enter an account name.  

I’m going to do bitwavelabs.space.

If you’re setting up this account for just one company, then you can make it the company name, but keep in mind that you can have multiple properties underneath one account.

So, if you’re running multiple websites and want them all in one account. I recommend keeping the account name generic.

And then you can select your data sharing settings, it’s totally up to you, I usually just do the default.  

From here, you’re going to want to enter a property name. 

I always do, just the url.

Enter your time zone.

And then this is a very important step right here, you’re going to want to click “Show advanced options”.

So, Google recently released Google Analytics 4.

It’s a little bit different than Universal Analytics, which everyone’s used to.

I’m not going to go into too much detail about what the differences are between Google Analytics 4 and Universal Analytics.

Which one you install is totally dependent on what reports/ data is important to you.

I recommend installing both on your website at this point in time for a few reasons.

The first being GA4 is relatively new, meaning there isn’t a lot of support/ how-to guides out on it yet.

And most tutorials you search are based on Universal Analytics.

So it will be a steeper learning curve for most people.

The second is in the future, I imagine Google moving towards supporting GA4 only as they continue to add features for it.

And lastly, I will also say if you’re running an ecommerce website, you should absolutely stick with Universal Analytics at this time, just because there’s better conversion tracking.

Alright, so we’re gonna go ahead and go back to our bitwavelabs.space, grab the URL.

And, yeah, this is where you would select Universal Analytics property only if you want to do just that.

But, again, there’s just really no reason to not just install both.

Oops, delete that, switch that over to HTTP because I don’t have an SSL for that site yet. And hit next.

Here, you’re gonna enter your business information.

This is really just for Google, so I’m going to go ahead and fast forward this whole section here.

Alright, once you have your business information entered, this tracking tag page will pop up.

And this code right here, this is your GA4, your Google Analytics 4 tracking code.

If you wanted to just install Google Analytics 4, this is the code you would put in your head tag.

However, if you want to install both, I will show you how to do that from the admin panel.

Alright, so we’re here on Google’s developer documentation, you can scroll down, you’ll see they recommend that this is how you install both Universal Analytics and GA4 onto a site.

So in order to do that, you’re going to go to your Google Analytics dashboard, and in the lower left hand side of the screen, you’ll see “Settings”, go ahead and click that.

And here you can see your different properties.

You can see there’s two setup, the Universal Analytics and GA4.

So here is your Universal Analytics tracking code.

This is going to be the base code that we use on the website.

And then we need to go grab that Google Analytics 4 tag.

So you come over here, go to “Data Streams”.

Click on the stream, which is your website.

And then, you can see that this is the GA4 tag, we just need to grab the code, that one snippet.

So, once you copy the Google Universal Analytics tracking code onto your website, you just need to add that GA4 snippet.

Which you can see here in the documentation, right after the Universal Analytics tracking snippet.

To test if you installed your tracking codes correctly, you’ll need to open your website in a new private browser and check the “Active Users right now” section in your analytics dashboard.

We’re currently in the Universal Analytics dashboard, and you can see in the blue right hand column, it says active users right now, zero.

If you’ve implemented your tracking code correctly, it should register that there is at least one active user on your website currently, and this is because you have your website open in a private window.

It’s important to know that you need to check both your Universal Analytics and your GA4 dashboards to make sure that each tag you implemented is working.

I’m going to quickly run through how to switch between the two properties here.

So this is your Universal Analytics. And this is your GA4. You can see you just click here and it’ll bring you to the GA4 dashboard.

If you want to go back, you can go up here and click “All Web Site Data”, and it brings you back to your Universal Analytics dashboard.

The last thing we’ll go over is how to add someone else to your, either your account, or just a single property.

So you can you go here, this is how you add someone to your full account, so they can see all your properties.

If you wanted to add someone to a single property on your account, you’d have to go over to your properties, click “Property Access Management”, and add them individually to each property.

So, if you wanted to add them to your Google Analytics 4 property only, same exact thing.

This is if you had multiple websites underneath one account as well, and only wanted to share that one website instead of sharing the entire account.

Alright, that about sums up how to create a Google Analytics account.

If you need assistance adding your tracking code to your website’s head tag, don’t hesitate to reach out to us, or your developer.

Adding a tracking code is a super simple process, but if done wrong, it can break your whole website.

If you have a WordPress website, you can download a plugin that will allow you to automatically install your tracking code.

However, we don’t recommend adding plugins if it can be avoided.

If you have any other additional questions, let us know!

Need help setting up your Google Analytics account?