Knowing audience and their tendencies is an important success factor for each site. The best way to know the audience is statistics of their visits and this is exactly what Google Analytics does for free. There are a lot of software and statistical add-ons, but we believe that Google Analytics is a must-have for each online shop.
Google Analytics present following items:
- Who visits your website - The geolocation of users, the browser they use, their display resolution, the language they speak, and etc.
- What are they doing when they are on your site - You can see how much they are on your site, which pages are most visited, which pages cause the users to leave the site, average of how many pages each user visits and etc.
- When will they visit your site - You can see at what time of day you have the most hits.
- Where did they came from - You can see where users came from. Through a search engine (Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.), through social networks and messengers (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Telegram, etc.), a link from another site or directly type your site's URL. Google Analytics will also show you in detail which source of the above came from your site so that you can focus on a source that is more important to you.
- How users contact with your content - You can see how many times they clicked on each link.
- And much more statistics.
We use all these data to improve our site and give our visitors what they like. Here's how to set up Google Analytics and connect it to a PrestaShop store.
Launch Google Analytics for PrestaShop
To do this, we have to follow these steps:
- Sign up for Google Analytics and getting Tracking ID.
- Installing Google Analytics PrestaShop module and adding Tracking ID into it.
First Step – Signing up in Google Analytics
1. Go to Google Analytics site and click on Sign up button.
2. Choose "Website" in New Account section.
3. Fill in custom name in Account Name field. This name is just a reminder for you to manage your multiple sites easily.
Fill in Website Name with a custom name. This is just for displaying to you.
Fill in Website URL field with your complete website URL. Make sure to choose http/https correctly.
4. In "Industry Category" section Choose the category that best represents your organization. This is just for bench marking and it will allow them to work towards building tailored reports, customized communication, and better education material for your business.
Choose time zone in "Reporting Time Zone" section.
5. Check options in "Data Sharing Settings" section and finally click on Get Tracking ID button.
6. Read terms of service agreement which displays in new pop-up windows and then click on "I accept" button.
7. You can find Tracking ID in this page. Copy it.
Now we have to put this code into our PrestaShop module to start getting statistics reports.
Second Step – Install Google Analytics PrestaShop module and adding Tracking ID.
1. Navigate to "Modules and Services > Modules"
2. Search for "Google Analytics" module and install it.
Tips
- Don't install Google Analytics API module.
- If you couldn't find Google Analytics module in list, change filters like the following image (Installed & Not Installed - Enabled & Disabled - All authors)
- It you still couldn't find it, download it from GitHub. Note that, a zip archive that you download from GitHub is named "ganalytics-master" so you have to extract it first and then rename it to "ganalytics" and finally zip it and upload it to your site.
3. Click on "Proceed with the installation" button.
Wait for the successful installation module message.
4. Paste code that you have copied in last part of the first step to "Google Analytics Tracking ID" field.
That's it. This step is finished, now we have to check whether our analytics work or not. To do this, open your site with another browser and then go to Google Analytics panel and click on Real Time icon.
Click on "Overview" to see online visitors. You can find out active users on site under Right now section and you can check most visited pages on Top Active Pages section. If you have done the above steps correctly, you will find out any number except 0.
If you have any question please ask it in comments. We will respond very soon.