You probably hear about tracking your website with Google Analytics, but what numbers do you need to track? After teaching this subject and working with clients on their websites, I’ve got the basics here for you.

What Should You Track with Google Analytics?

The problem with Google Analytics is when you open up the program you can get lost in all the numbers. Instead, before even looking at numbers, decide what is important to you and focus on collecting that specific data.

First, What are the goals for your website? If you just want people to follow your blog, then you’d want to follow your page views to your blog posts and see if views are going up. If you want increased sales on your site, you’d want to see how many people are coming to your sales page. You would also want to track how changes to your website and marketing affect those views and sales.

For example, If I share a blog post on Facebook, is the website receiving more traffic from Facebook that same week? This means tracking social media referrer numbers for the week before, during, and after shares on Facebook.

Another example, if you want your traffic to go to your sales page, but your top page for traffic is your homepage. You would want to track those numbers for a few weeks before making any change to your website. Decide what might work to get more eyes on your sales page, make the changes, then watch the numbers again to see if the change worked.

I Know What I Want to Track, Now What?

Once you know what you want to track, it’s time to come up with a spreadsheet to use. If you’d like a spreadsheet with some simple information on numbers to track,download this Excel file. What I’ve also done in the spreadsheet is noted where to find the information. This helps me to immediately move to where I need to pull data, and spending less time trying to remember where to find the data.

Just remember, don’t get bogged down all the reports you can find in Google Analytics!

If you need some step-by-step information about getting into Google, check out these posts I wrote for AmDee LLC.

I’m Sonja Dewing. I’m published author of  Toy of the Gods and other stories available on Amazon and I’m always seeking adventure. I’m a Social Media Manager and consult with writers on creativity and social media.