Quick answer: To set up Google Analytics properly, create an account and a Universal Analytics property for your website, and add the analytics.js tracking code to every page, either directly or through Google Tag Manager. Then create three views (raw, test and main), filter out your own office traffic and spam, turn on site search tracking, set up goals for enquiries and sales, and link Search Console and AdWords. Finally, check the real time report and compare data against your own records to confirm everything is tracking correctly.
Many small business sites have Google Analytics installed, but far fewer have it set up in a way that answers useful questions. The default installation counts visits. A proper setup tells you which marketing brings enquiries, which pages lead to sales and where visitors drop out. The difference takes an hour or two.
How Google Analytics is organised
Analytics has three levels:
- Account: usually your business. You can have several.
- Property: a website or app you track. Each has its own tracking ID, which looks like UA-12345678-1.
- View: a filtered version of the property’s data. Each property can have several views with different settings.
Data in a view is processed according to that view’s filters and settings at the time it is collected. You cannot go back and reprocess old data in a view, which is why getting the setup right early matters.
Step 1: Create the account and property
Sign in to Google Analytics with a Google account the business controls, not a personal account belonging to someone who might leave. Create an account for the business and a property for the website.
When creating the property:
- Enter the correct URL, including whether it uses
https://. - Choose your industry category and the correct time zone, which affects how days are reported.
- Turn on the data sharing settings you are comfortable with.
Add other people through User Management with the level of access they need, rather than sharing your login.
Step 2: Install the tracking code
Option A: Add the code directly
The property gives you a snippet of JavaScript using analytics.js. It should appear on every page, just before the closing </head> tag. On WordPress, add it through your theme’s header template or a lightweight plugin built for the purpose. Avoid pasting it in several places, which causes double counting.
Option B: Use Google Tag Manager
Google Tag Manager is a free tool that holds all your tracking tags in one container. You add the container code to your site once, then add Analytics, AdWords conversion tags, remarketing tags and others through the Tag Manager interface.
Tag Manager is worth the extra setup for most businesses, because it lets you add event tracking, such as clicks on phone numbers or file downloads, without editing your site’s code each time. It also keeps third party scripts organised.
Ecommerce sites
If you run a shop, turn on ecommerce tracking or enhanced ecommerce to send order values and products to Analytics. WooCommerce and Shopify both have integrations that handle this.
Step 3: Set up views
Create at least three views in each property:
- Raw data: no filters at all. A backup in case something goes wrong with your other views.
- Test: where you try new filters before applying them to your main view.
- Main: the view you report from, with filters applied.
Rename them clearly, for example “Main view (filtered)”, so nobody uses the wrong one.
Step 4: Add filters
Filters clean up the data in your main view. Useful ones for small businesses:
- Exclude internal traffic: filter out your office’s IP address so staff visits do not inflate numbers or skew conversion rates.
- Lowercase request URI: combines
/Contact/and/contact/into one row. - Hostname filter: include only traffic to your own domain. This blocks much of the ghost spam that never actually visits your site.
Referral spam has been a real nuisance over the past year. Our guide to referral spam covers how to recognise and filter it.
In view settings, also tick “Exclude all hits from known bots and spiders”.
Step 5: Turn on site search tracking
If your site has a search box, enable site search tracking in the view settings. For WordPress the query parameter is s. You will see what visitors search for, which is valuable insight into what they expect to find.
Step 6: Set up goals
Goals are how Analytics measures success. Without them, you can see traffic but not results. Typical goals for a small business:
- Contact or quote form submitted: a destination goal using the thank you page URL.
- Phone number clicked: an event goal, using Tag Manager to track clicks on
tel:links. - Newsletter sign-up: a destination or event goal.
- Booking made: a destination goal on the confirmation page.
- Brochure downloaded: an event goal.
Assign a value to goals if you can estimate what a lead is worth. Our detailed guide to Google Analytics goals walks through each type.
Step 7: Link other Google tools
- Search Console: shows the search queries that bring visitors, inside Analytics. See our guide to linking Search Console to Google Analytics.
- AdWords: imports cost and click data and lets you see what visitors from ads do on your site.
Step 8: Track campaigns properly
Add UTM parameters to links in emails, social posts and other campaigns, so Analytics can attribute visits correctly. Google’s Campaign URL Builder creates them. Use a consistent naming scheme: lowercase, the same source names every time (for example newsletter, not sometimes Newsletter and sometimes email).
Step 9: Check it works
- Open the Real-Time report and visit your site from your phone (not on the office network). You should appear.
- Submit a test form and check the goal fires.
- After a week, compare enquiries recorded in Analytics with the enquiries you actually received. Some difference is normal, but large gaps suggest a tracking problem.
- Check for duplicate tracking: a bounce rate close to zero often means the code is firing twice.
Reports to look at first
You do not need to master every report. Start with:
- Acquisition, All Traffic, Channels: where visitors come from, and which channels lead to goals.
- Behaviour, Site Content, Landing Pages: which pages people arrive on and how they perform.
- Conversions, Goals, Overview: how many enquiries or sales, and from where.
- Audience, Mobile, Overview: how mobile visitors behave compared with desktop.
Set up a monthly email report of the key numbers, so you see trends without having to log in.
FAQ
Is Google Analytics free?
Yes, the standard version is free for most businesses. Analytics 360 is a paid version for large organisations.
Should I use Google Tag Manager or the plain code?
Tag Manager takes a little more setup but makes future tracking changes much easier. It suits most businesses.
Why does Analytics show fewer enquiries than I received?
Goals may not be set up for every route, such as phone calls or emails, and some visitors block tracking scripts. Compare trends rather than expecting an exact match.
Know what your website is doing for you
A careful setup turns Analytics from a visitor counter into a tool for decisions. We set up tracking, goals and reports so you can see what brings in business. See how we help businesses know what’s working.
