Google Analytics is a free service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic. Launched in 2005, it has become the industry standard for web analytics, providing valuable insights into your website’s performance. By integrating a small piece of JavaScript code into your website, Google Analytics can collect data about your visitors, including how they arrived at your site, what pages they viewed, how long they stayed, and much more.
After signing up for Google Analytics, users must verify a property and install the Javascript code on their website.
This is an example Google Analytics code:
<script>
(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){i['GoogleAnalyticsObject']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){
(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),
m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)
})(window,document,'script','//www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js','ga');
ga('create', 'UA-xxxxxx-1', 'auto');
ga('send', 'pageview');
</script>
This code collects anonymous information every time someone visits a page, detailing how the user interacted with it. The code can, for example, reveal how many visitors viewed product pages or how many users completed a purchase. Additionally, the tracking code gathers information from the user’s browser, including language preferences, the type of browser, and the device and operating system being used.
Once the tracking code collects data, it sends it to Google Analytics, which processes it into reports.
Watch the videos to get started with Google Analytics: