Do you know how many people visit your website every month? And do you know what pages these visitors look at, and what they’re interested in? Perhaps you wonder where your enquiries come from – did these leads find your website through your social media posts, or have they searched for you on Google? You’ll find the answers to all of these questions (plus a whole lot more) in your Google Analytics account.
If you haven’t set up your Google Analytics yet, now is the time to do so. It’s the first step in understanding who your website visitors are, what they want to see and how they behave when visiting your website. Having an overview of how your website visitors behave will allow you to optimise the return on investment of both your website and social media presence.
If you’re not familiar with programs like this, you may have no idea where to start and how to set it up for your website. For those who feel a bit lost, don’t give up just yet: we’ll take you through how to set up Google Analytics in this super easy, step-by-step guide.
What is Google Analytics?
Google Analytics is a powerful tool that provides you with a wealth of information about your website and visitors. It collects data from your website and puts it together in easy-to-read and understandable reports and visuals. And the best part: it’s completely free.
It’s one of the most popular digital marketing tools across the world – almost 60% of all websites use Google Analytics! It doesn’t matter how small or big your agency is: any website, including your real estate website, will benefit from having Google Analytics installed.
To give you an idea of what kind of information you can access with Google Analytics, here are a few examples (out of the endless amount of available reports and data):
- The overall amount of traffic your website gets
- How many visitors return to your website
- The places your traffic came from
- Demographic information about your visitors
- What device your traffic is using
- How long visitors spend on your website
- How many visitors converted into leads
Sounds great, doesn’t it? So, let’s jump into how to set up Analytics for your own website.
How to set up Google Analytics
Luckily, setting up Google Analytics is quite straightforward. It can however seem a little daunting if you’re not familiar with digital programs, so we’ll take you through the steps.
IMPORTANT: Make sure you always set up your Google Analytics account with your own (business) email or a generic company email – do not let an agency or staff member use an account that you do not have access to. If you are not the primary owner of the Analytics account, you risk losing all your data and having to start over again when your staff member ends their employment or when you end the partnership with your agency. Once the account has been created, you can always add them as users.
- First, make sure you have a Google account and login to this. If you don’t have a Google account yet, create one.
- Now, visit https://analytics.google.com/ and click on ‘Start measuring’.
- You will see the screen as per the below screenshot. Fill in your account name (your real estate business name) in the appropriate field and click on Next. You can opt to untick the data sharing boxes.
- Fill in your property name (e.g. ‘[Your business name] website’), set the correct time zone and currency. Click on Show advanced options.
- Turn on ‘Create a Universal Analytics property’. Enter your website URL and click on Next.
- Now, fill in your business information. Select Real Estate as the industry and answer the other questions before clicking on Create.
- Accept all the terms and conditions. Make sure to set the country to Australia.
- You will now receive your tracking code. Under Tagging Instructions, click on Global site tag (gtag.js) and click on the copy icon to copy the tag.
Please note this tag works for both Google Analytics 4 and Universal Analytics – it will send data to both properties.
- Follow the instructions in Google Analytics and paste the tag into the <head> section of your HTML. The easiest way to do this is to add it to your header or footer, so it applies to your whole site.
TIP: If you’re using Arosoftware for your real estate website, you can easily add this code into the designated Google Analytics field in your site’s settings. Simply head to your Website Manager, click on Site Settings and then proceed to your Advanced Options.
Once you’ve added the global site tag to your website, your Analytics is set up and will start to collect data!
Switch to Universal Google Analytics
By default, you will now be in your GA4 Property – Google’s newest version of Analytics. Your Universal Property is likely to be the one where you’ll spend most of your time when you first get started with Analytics: this is where you can view the data examples we mentioned in the beginning of this post.
To switch the view and go to your Universal account, click on the All accounts > tab in the top left corner, next to the Analytics logo.
In here, you’ll see another property listed; the one without GA4 at the end. Click on this property, and you’ll switch to your website analytics dashboard.
What to do after you’ve set it up
From here on, there are tons of different possibilities. You could link your Google Analytics account to your other Google accounts, such as Google Search Console, Google Tag Manager and Google Ads, you could set up goals in your Analytics and start measuring them, or you could add team members to your account.
Within Google Analytics, there are endless amounts of reports to analyse. If it’s your first time on the platform, it can be daunting to look at and you may have no idea where to start. To help you out, we’ve outlined three simple, top reports you should have a look at as a real estate agent: Google Analytics For Real Estate. These reports are simple, contain some of the most important information and are therefore a great starting point for you to use Google Analytics.
Need help?
If you’re unsure how to get started or simply don’t have the time to set up digital tools such as Google Analytics yourself, we can help. Make sure to check out our simple Digital Basics package, which includes the setup of various tools such as Google Analytics, Search Console, your Facebook pixel and more.
Alternatively, you can always book a free consultation with one of our expert team members to find out more about how Lead Fleet can assist you with digital marketing – the whole range of things. Simply book a time that suits you via the link below.
