We’re going to get a little technical here, there is just no way around it. Here’s how you set up Google Analytics, simplified as much as humanly possible:
1. Go to http://www.google.com/analytics/. Click on “sign up now”. You’ll need to log in to your Google account (if you’ve ever used gmail or Google checkout you have a Google account already) or create a Google account.
2. Once you are signed in, click on “sign up”
3. Fill out your domain name/website and info on the following pages.
4. You will get a code similar to this:
<script type=”text/javascript”> var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push([‘_setAccount’, ‘UA-12345678-1’]); _gaq.push([‘_trackPageview’]);
(function() { var ga = document.createElement(‘script’); ga.type = ‘text/javascript’; ga.async = true; ga.src = (‘https:’ == document.location.protocol ? ‘https://ssl’ : ‘http://www’) + ‘.google-analytics.com/ga.js’; var s = document.getElementsByTagName(‘script’)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })();
</script>
Copy the code and paste it in some sort of text document on your computer to save it for yourself in case you can’t find it later.
5. Where you put the code on your site depends on the kind of site you have, so I’ve listed the main ones here. Click on the type of site you have, and it will take you to a page that should tell you where to put your code.