Setting Up Google Analytics: A Step-by-Step Guide

Google Analytics is a powerful traffic reporting system that will provide insight on how people find your Web site and how they behave once they get there. It's a required component of any Web marketing strategy.

This post is kind of a how-to of getting Google Analytics setup on your Web site, whether you're a DIYer or you want to provide the necessary snippet of code to your Web developer to keep your update costs down.

Step 1: Get a Google account.

Chances are, you may already have a Google account; if you have a gmail address, you already do. However, you may want to create a new Google account specifically for your Web site, separate from your personal Gmail.

If so, start by visiting http://www.google.com. In the top right corner you should see a Sign In link. Click it.

How to Share Your Google Analytics (Without Sharing Your Google Account)

As you may know, here at flyte we're pretty fond of Google Analytics and set our clients up with this great, free traffic reporting software.

If you're working with a contractor who's helping you with search engine marketing, or improving your Web site's effectiveness, they may want/need access to your traffic reports to make better recommendations. However, if you give them full access to your Google account they can also access your Gmail and intercept all of your mushy emails or those cease-and-desist letters from Sarah Palin's lawyers.

Here's how you can give them access to just your reports but keep curious eyes away from anything else.

First, login to your Google Analytics account. Down near the bottom of the page you'll see "User Manager." Click there.

That will take you to a page that will show you any user that already has access to the traffic reports. In the dark gray bar you'll see an Add User link near the right. Click there.

This will take you a page where you can add a new user. You can give this new user just View Reports access or make them an Account Administrator. If you choose to give them Account Administrator access they will be able to edit your account settings such as adding other users, creating filters or having Google Analytics email certain reports to users.

This could be just what you want, but just be aware of what you're choosing.

Your new user will need to have a Google account, but as Google accounts are free this probably isn't much of a problem.

You may be tracking reports for multiple Web sites. If you're just giving View Reports access you'll need to select at least one domain from the Available Website Profiles, click the "Add>>" button, and make sure they end up under Selected Website Profiles. Otherwise, the reports won't transfer.

And as always, save your work.

That's all you need to do. Next time they log into their Google Analytics account they'll see a link to your analytics on their dashboard page.

Rich Brooks
Web Analytics Guy

Web Marketing Course for Entrepreneurs and Small Business

I can't believe that we're just one week away from the first class of Web Marketing for Entrepreneurs and Small Business over at the University of Southern Maine.

Well, actually I can, as I spent most of yesterday afternoon updating and revamping the search engine optimization content for the class. And I've blocked out plenty of hours this week to review the rest of my content and build out the social media component. But the "I can't believe" part stresses the fact that it's only a week away, and if you were planning on coming you've got to get a move on.

Who should go? Well, you should be in driving distance of Portland, Maine. (Yes, one of these days I'll create an online version, but not today.) Assuming that you can get to the campus, this course is geared to small business owners, marketers and entrepreneurs who are looking to build a Web presence to grow their business.

Topics will include search engine visibility (how do you out rank your competition,) email marketing, business blogs, social media, e-commerce, and building a Web site that will convert prospects into customers.

The course is held over four Monday nights, 11/10/2008 - 12/1/2008, from 6pm - 8pm at the Abromson Center on the campus of the University of Southern Maine (directions.) The cost is $205, but you need to pre-register for the class, so...

Register Now!

We'll be spending class time reviewing students' current Web sites (when applicable) and making on the spot recommendations to help you rank higher, drive more qualified leads to your site, and convert more prospects into customers. So what are you waiting for?

Register Now!

Rich Brooks
Oh Captain, Your Captain

Blogworld Sunday Keynote with Timothy Ferriss, Mike Shinoda & Rohit Bhargava #bhe08

Once again, my chicken scratches from Blogworld...

Rohit Bhargava, Timothy Ferriss (4 Hour Work Week), Mike Shinoda (Linkin Park)

Q. Linkin Park – how named?
A. Not a park in Chicago. Changed spelling to get URL. Knew it was important to have a home on the Internet.

Q. How were bloggers helpful in the success of book (4 hr workweek)?
A. Knew he had limited set of options as a first time author. Bet on bloggers. Pays more to be interested than interesting. Didn’t pitch bloggers, just got drunk w/them. If you’re vulnerable and open about shortcomings people are more open to help you. Not a trick or method, just good idea. Never actively asked for a review by bloggers. Did offer to do q & a or guest posts.

Q. How important is it NOT to be an asshole (b/c you could be one?)
A. Mike: Bigger assholes get more press, but he doesn’t believe any press is good press. You need to build your brand in a real way. Put up what you think is authentic and interesting. If the fan comes and experiences a consistent feeling for what you promised you’ll be building community.
Ferris: You don’t want to be the best in your category, you want to create a new category. What are you associated with. Ferris didn’t want to be compared to time management authors, so created “lifestyle design.”

Don’t be an asshole b/c you meet the same people on the way down as you met on the way up. Being nice to unimportant people can be incredibly important.
Nice doesn’t = passive. You can be cordial but direct.

Q. Karmic Marketing – things come back to you.
A. Ferris: Who reads your blog is often more important than how many. There’s income from you blog $, but then there’s non-$ income from a blog, i.e., relationships, experiences, etc. Didn’t trademark “lifestyle design.” Wanted to build a movement.
Shinoda: The fan is not below you. By engaging mashup and crowdsourcing you can get some thing better. You have to have a certain humility to appreciate that.

Q. What kind of tracking do you do?
Ferris: Total anaylitic whore. GA, CrazyEgg, etc. Use all the tools, but not all # are created equal. Bounce rate, top referrers, time on site, page views are the ones he looks at most often. Fine line between asshole and being direct. If you deliver your honest opinion...you should talk to your readers like you talk to your friends after a couple of drinks. Tell them what they need to hear, not what they want to hear. Can’t try to avoid offending everyone. Being an asshole leads to transient, angry audience w/no loyalty.
Shinoda: Be comfortable with what you’re doing every step of the way.

Books to read:

• Category 1 – Joe Callaway?
• 22 immutable laws of branding
• Blue Ocean Strategy

Drug Dealing for Fun and Profit—original title for 4 hour work week. 

Google ad words, tested title.  Found best combination of words for title.  Tested artwok on covers as well. 

What matters is not how many people don’t get it...only how many that do.  Write what you are passionate about, not what you think the readers want to read.  Write about who you are, real important things to you...not your readers. 

Ferris doesn’t write in a vacuum. He writes from the heart but gets feedback from community.
Shinoda: change your band name to whatever.com. You need the .com.
What is the ONE Thing...(Tim)—look at the 80/20 analysis.  Find 20% of activities and people...stress causers...eliminate as much static as possible.  Practice asking for what you want and telling people.  Build up comfort level.  Tell people what you don’t like.  Get used to that feeling.

Ferris: social media is #1 way to engage people globally. Archimedes lever for doing whatever he wants.

Learn Internet Marketing in Maine This Fall

For those living in or near southern Maine who are looking to learn more about using Internet Marketing to grow your business, you may be in luck.

I'll be teaching a 4 class course on Web Marketing for Entrepreneurs and Small Business at the University of Southern Maine. I've taught this course a few times before, and it continues to evolve. This time around there will be more time given to social media and how you can use it to leverage your brand and connect with prospects and customers. We'll look at YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and more.

As in the past, we'll also spend time on what I consider the building blocks of Web marketing:

• Search Engine Optimization: how to improve your search engine visibility through keyword rich content and incoming links.
• Business Blogs: how a blog can increase visibility, improve rankings, and establish you as an expert.
• Email Marketing: how to build a subscriber base in a world that has too many ezines already.

And we'll look at traffic reports (analytics), podcasting, and building a Web site that converts prospects into customers.

Dates & Times: 4 Mondays, November  10-December  1, 6-8 p.m.        

Cost: $205 (8 contact hours/ 0.8 CEUs)        
Place: Abromson Center, 88 Bedford Street, USM Portland campus (directions)

Register Now!

Rich Brooks
Small Business Web Marketing Expert

Google Analytics for Beginners: How to Make the Most of Your Traffic Reports

When flyte launches a Web site for a client we usually configure a copy of Google Analytics so that the client can get accurate reports on how his or her site is performing.

However, as friendly as Google Analytics (GA) seems to us, some of our clients feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information and reports it generates, or just don't know how to get started with it.

To help solve this problem this month's flyte log is entitled The Beginner's Guide to Google Analytics. It reviews the dashboard, looks at a few of the most important reports, and has click-em-and-they-grow screen captures of each report we discuss. If you have Google Analytics installed--or even if you don't...yet--this is a great place to start learning about all the tools GA can offer you.

To avoid missing any future issues of flyte log and to stay a step ahead of the competition, go ahead and subscribe now!

Rich Brooks
Google Analytics for Small Business

How to Get a Small Business Web Site for Nearly Nothing

In today's Small Business section of the Wall Street Journal is an article called Creating a Successful Site for Almost Nothing by Vauhini Vara. (Link will expire soon for non-subscribers, so click now!) And unlike a lot of similar-themed articles for mainstream media, this one is pretty well researched and written. If you've never had a Web site before, following the instructions in this article is a great start.

You'd think this would make me nervous, being a Web designer and all. I mean, look no further than travel agents to see a job title that's been almost erased by free tools on the Internet. Do free and nearly free Web sites mean the end for your local Web designer?

Ummm...no. Although many travel agents closed their doors after Expedia and Travelocity became popular, others chose the value-added route and became wildly successful. Like any service professional, the best will focus on services that can't be automated or outsourced abroad.

Business owners who are looking for free and nearly free Web sites aren't my target audience. Cheap is not the same as valuable; in fact, the two are usually diametrically opposed. As the article states,

[The hosting companies that offer free hosting] often make money by charging for premium services or running ads on your Web pages.

I mean, what business would have free ads on their Web site? Probably the same ones who hand out business cards that say "Learn how you can get your 50 free business cards by calling..." It doesn't reek of professionalism.

Now, when I started out I designed my own business cards and printed (yes, printed) my monthly newsletter on my dad's printer/copier to save money. I remember the startup days. But if you're a serious business, you shouldn't be trying to create a free Web site, you should be trying to build an effective Web plan that includes search engine optimization, email marketing, blogging and maybe even a social media strategy.

Rich Brooks
Small Business Web Sites and Internet Marketing

CrazyEgg is Crazy Good News for Web Site Owners

I've been using CrazyEgg, a tool that helps site owners get a better understanding of how visitors are using their Web sites.

CrazyEgg using tracking software to see where visitors are clicking on your Web site. What makes this a step above Site Overlay through Google Analytics, is that GA only tracks links. CrazyEgg tracks all clicks on a given page. Further, it breaks down those links in a few different ways.

To get started with CrazyEgg you can sign up for a free account which will allow you to track up to four pages. You'll need to add a piece of javascript to the pages you want to track.

CrazyEgg offers four views including Overlay, List, Heatmap and Confetti.

Overlay: You'll see different color-coded symbols by the links on the page you're analyzing giving you an immediate impression of what links are hot and which are not.

By clicking on any of these symbols you open up a window with more detailed information on how many people clicked on the link, and also the referrers that sent the visitors your way.

List: Provides a laundry list of all the clicks that took place on your page and organizes them by popularity. You can further export this list to Excel or other spreadsheet program.

Heatmap: The heatmap view gives you a visual overview of where people clicked on your site. What I found interesting from this view (and Overlay) was how many people visited our Contact page or signed up for our email newsletter at the bottom of the home page.

I didn't expect to have anyone want to contact us before checking out the site, and I've always felt the email signup was buried, and that we were getting signups because of the email bait we offer. (That was significantly more popular, but it was nice to see some people just wanted to sign up for our email newsletter.)

Confetti: This fun view shows you EXACTLY where visitors clicked, and allows you to color coordinate the report based on the top 15 referrers, the top 15 search terms, operating systems, browsers, window size and even time to click.

It's interesting to run a test and see how people are interacting with your home page. You may find certain links you consider important are completely ignored, while others are getting a lot more play. Based on the reports you may (as I did) rework parts of the page to increase signups or get people to call you.

It's also interesting to see whether people are clicking on images or text calls-to-action. I was also fascinated to see people clicking on images that weren't links at all. I'm not sure if these were accidental or not, but it does get you thinking about how different people will act differently at your site.

There are--of course--paid levels of CrazyEgg for site owners needing to run more reports at once, but almost any entrepreneur can benefit from the free trial version. CrazyEgg is a great addition to Google Analytics as you strive to better understand your visitors and build a more effective Web strategy.

Rich Brooks
Web Marketer  

Do Your Competitors' Web Sites Out Perform Yours?

Ever wonder how your Web site stacks up against the competition? Do other pet shop owners/business coaches/karate teachers get as much traffic as you? Do they get more page views, or do people spend more time on their site?

Well, now Google is offering a benchmarking service through Google Analytics, the free traffic reporting system they offer. You can measure your Web site's results against that of your and related vertical industries.

For more details on how this all works, and how you can set it up, check out the newest issue of flyte log, our monthly email newsletter: Does Your Web Site Beat the Competition?

(If you're a regular reader of this blog, you've already read the rough draft of this article, since I blogged it last week. For the rest of you however, it's new to you!)

Rich Brooks
Says Competition is Healthy

Google Analytics Benchmarking Service: How Do You Rate?

How do you compare to other Web sites in your industry?

It's fun and informative to review your Google Analytics reports to see how your Web site is fairing. Whether your traffic is going up or down, how people are finding you, what search terms they may be using, what your conversion rate is, etc. But a common question I'm often asked is "how do I compare to other nursing homes/psychologists/furniture makers?"

Until recently I've responded, "ummm...is that car on fire?" and then run away when they turned their head.

But now, Google Analytics, the free traffic reporting system from Google is offering benchmarking data so you can compare your results within your industry. The only cost...your soul! <Insert evil laugh here.>

Actually, just your data. And it's supposedly shared anonymously. (And if you can't trust a giant corporate with the motto "Don't Be Evil", who can you trust?)

Here's how you set up Benchmarking in Google Analytics: