Google Analytics ga.js vs urchin.js

Back in 2007 Google Analytics decided to switch over to ga.js, which is a new version of the javascript tracking code which is loaded through the snippet of code implemented on your webpages. Ga.js provides the functionality required for specific actions and events to be captured, processed and passed on to your Google Analytics reporting.

Although urchin.js continues to deliver the data just like it did in the early days of Google Analytics, there are some important benefits to updating your code to ga.js:

• ga.js loads and works faster than urchin.js, reducing page load time
• ga.js is easier to understand and customize
• It detects the use of https automatically
• e-Commerce and cross-domain tracking are easier to set up
• Allows you to use new features offered by GA now, and in future updates

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Q&A: Google Analytics code in footer using Dreamweaver

Now and then I get some pretty interesting questions, sent to me through my contact form. I got one such question several times, and mostly from marketers who don’t really deal with the back-end of websites and aren’t quite sure how to get Google Analytics code up on their sites.

So the question I’m tackling today is: “How can I include Google Analytics code in the footer of my pages using Dreamweaver?”

Let’s start with some basic instructions on how to include Google Analytics code on your website’s pages. If you intend to update individual pages (not recommended for large sites), simply load Dreamweaver, load the page you’d like to place Google Analytics code on and in the top of your screen click on the Code view button to get into the page’s code.

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Working with and setting up Goals in Google Analytics

The use of Goals comes forward from the main motivator behind web analytics for most of us: Analyzing and optimizing how many people are doing what we want them to do and (perhaps more importantly) why others don’t.

In its simplest form, a Goal is a page marker that can be set in Google Analytics, which tells you the amount of times a certain page is reached and its most common use is recording product purchases or registration completions.  Without tracking Goals, trying to get more business in and out of your website would be like driving blind. There’d be no way of telling what performance is today, nor what it will be tomorrow so it’s impossible to know which of your online marketing efforts are paying off and which aren’t.

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Filters in Google Analytics

Using filters is a basic tool that can help you ignore data that is of no use to you, or that will cause inaccuracies in your data. It’s important that before you start working with filters you know which reports and which data matter to you or your organization, so as to avoid future complications or worse: gaps in your data.

Another tool that helps you organize your data better is segmentation.

Available filters in Google Analytics

Google Analytics provides a powerful set of filters which can easily be set through the Account Settings dashboard. By clicking the option Filter Manager, at the bottom of the Website Profiles table, you’ll be able to access the Filters dashboard. The top right hand option Add Filter allows you to create new filters, based on the following pre-set options:

• Exclude all clicks from a domain: Using this filter you can exclude tracking of visitors to your site that come from specific referring sites
• Exclude all clicks from an IP address: This filter option will allow you to filter out any visits made to your site from a specific IP address or IP range
• Include only traffic from a specific subdirectory: This filter is particularly handy when creating separate website profiles to track certain parts of sites, based on subdirectories in your site’s page structure
• Custom filter

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Google Analytics user access management

Access Management is another option you’ll find in most web analytics tools. It’s the ability to enable others (colleagues, manager, administrator or simply partner) to look into and control (optional) Google Analytics reports.

Sharing a single account might not be something one would naturally do and it might be something that makes many people nervous (accidental changes or mistakes made by others can be extremely frustrating), but thankfully the GA Access Manager lets you control who has access and to what degree they can manipulate settings.

Something to be careful with is user access when you track multiple websites within the same account. Should you enable other users to access your account with administrator privileges, they will be able to view reports for your other sites as well. Should you want to avoid other users from seeing reports for sites that they do not need to look into you can choose to grant access only to a single website profile (rather than providing them with access to the whole account), but only for “Read only” users, not administrator enabled users. This can be done within the Access Manager, but also by editing Website Profile settings.

You can find the Access Manager option at the bottom of the Analytics Settings page, and this will take you to the Access Management settings dashboard. Here you can add users and manage user access.

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Working with website profiles in Google Analytics

In order to use advanced settings for Google Analytics, log in to your account and you’ll land on the settings dashboard straight away.

Website Profiles

GA offers the option to track multiple websites within the same account, which is a handy feature that most web analytics tools offer these days. Besides completely separate sites, you can create profiles to track subdomains or parts of a single website separately. On the settings dashboard you’ll notice a table of Website profiles, which gives you an overview of sites currently tracked and their tracking status.

Adding a profile

1. In the Website Profiles table, click Website Profile
2. An information page appears, which offers you the option to add a profile for a new domain or an existing domain (in case you’d like to track part of one of your sites or a subdomain).
3. In case you’re adding a profile for a new domain, select whether the site is an HTTP or HTTPS site, provide the website URL which you’d like to track and select your country from the drop-down list, and click Continue. In case you’d like to add a profile for an existing domain, select the domain in question, enter a new profile name, select your country from the drop-down list, and click Finish.
4. If you’re creating a profile for a new domain, the Tracking Status screen will show up, providing you with the script you’ll need to place on all pages of your sites (or in your site’s templates).

Once you’ve added the code to your website, Google Analytics will change the tracking status of the new profile to Pending and to Receiving Data when enough data has been gathered to start reporting. Keep in mind, however, that to make sense of your reporting data you’ll need at least a couple of months’ worth of data!
So why would you set up separate profiles for parts/subdomains of your sites? The main benefit is that you can adjust specific settings for each part. This can be particularly handy in case you’d like to use customized segmentation more than once on the same site. (Customized segmentation can generally be used for one specific purpose in Google Analytics.)

Should conversion paths go through other parts/subdomains, you can adjust the Google Analytics code and track a single page in multiple accounts.

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