Step by Step Guide: Creating Your First Google Analytics Account

While it’s fairly simple to create a Google Analytics account, there’s still room for confusion. Taking the time to learn key terms beforehand, like accounts and properties, will ensure that you are setting your account up properly. Errors in the signup process can become very evident as you start implementing more advanced analytics techniques. To save you some trouble in the long run, we created this beginner-friendly, step-by-step guide to help you create your first Google Analytics account. Happy analyzing everyone!

Account vs. Property

Before getting started, it’s important to know the difference between an account and a property. A property is any website, app, or device you want to track. An account is how you track one or more of these properties.

You can add users at the account, property, or view level. The level at which you add a user determines that user’s initial access. For example, if you add a user at the account level, then that user also has access to all the properties and views in the account, with the same set of permissions. (Google)

Here’s an example of two possible account structures:

 

Liz has a personal account that only she has access to, and uses it to manage three different websites (or properties). If Liz grants other users with account-level access, they will also have full access to all three properties. In the case of the second account, the team account, three users all have full access to the googleanalytics.com property. Liz can also add users on a property-level basis, which will give them access only to that specific property. There are many ways in which you can configure these accounts, but keep in mind that the maximum number of properties per account is 50.

How to create a Google Analytics account

What you need:

1. A Google account
2. Admin-level access to a website, app or device

Step 1: Click here and select “Sign Up”

Step 2: Set up your account and property

1. Name the account.
2. For Website Name, enter the name of the website.
3. Under Website URL, click on the dropdown menu and select the correct protocol, then enter the website URL in the field next to it.
   
4. Select your Industry Category.
5. Select your Reporting Time Zone.

Step 3: Data sharing settings

The boxes are checked by default. You can read more about each option on Google’s support page and deselect the options you don’t want. When you’re finished, click “Get Tracking ID” at the bottom.

That’s it! You now have a Google Analytics account.

What’s next?

Here’s what you’ll want to do next:

1. Implement the Google Analytics tracking code onto your website
   In order to actually start collecting data, you need to insert the tracking code onto your website. If you have a WordPress site, you can use a plugin to do this.
2. Set up a new property
   In addition to the website you’ve just created, you can set up a new property. Properties can be websites, mobile apps or devices (i.e. point-of-sales) and you can have up to 50 properties per account.
3. Add a view
   Views are different ways to view your data. An unfiltered view is automatically created for each property, but you can create additional views and apply filters to them. For example, you can create a view that excludes internal traffic or filter data by location. You can have up to 25 views for each property.
4. Set up an event or goal
   While you might be able to gather insights from raw data, custom events and goals make it easier to track key performance indicators.