Google Analytics... I Think I'm Obsessed!

Google Analytics is a pretty cool tool for people who'd like to know how to better tweak their website to attract more traffic. ETSY has made it pretty easy for sellers to track the traffic to their etsy shop by incorporating the necessary HTML code into their site.

so, when i log in, i can see where my traffic is coming from, what time of day gets the most traffic, and what pages people are looking at. it's pretty neat to see where people come from, and how long they linger in my etsy shop.

here's a basic tutorial that might help people get their Google Analytics account up and running - i had originally posted it over on the etsy tradeaholics' blog because we got obsessed over it!

STEP 1: visit www.google.com/analytics and sign in (if you have an existing igoogle account)/sign up for a new account.
STEP 2: click on "Add Website Profile". in the URL area and enter your etsy shop address like this: http://www.yourshop.etsy.com/, set your location, time and hit "finish". If they ask for your shop name type in http://www.yourshop.etsy.com/ (Do NOT include the http:// in the URL)
STEP 3: when you get to the tracking code page just scroll to the bottom and hit "finish". you don't need this code - it states here that you should copy the code and put on all your webpages, but, lucky for us, etsy already does this for us automatically. just hit "finish".
STEP 4: on the next page you will see a grey table with your website URL. next to the URL should be a code that looks like UA-1234567-8. highlight and copy the code to your clipboard. (ctrl + C)
STEP 5: open up a separate browser page (don't close your Google Analytics page) and go to http://www.etsy.com/shop_analytics.php. you can also access the page you need on etsy via "your etsy" - there is a link on the left hand side toolbar that says "web analytics". paste (Ctrl + V) the code in the designated area. save changes.
STEP 6: now you're finished setting up Google Analytics for your etsy shop!!

if you look at the overview page in Google Analytics you will see that there is a yellow symbol with an exclamation mark on it under the status column. this just means that your account isn't showing stats yet - not that you did anything wrong! when it turns into a green check mark then you can start viewing your stats. it can take up to 24 hours for the stats counter to update - but mine started showing before that.i hope that it helps make things a little clearer for everyone. i know that the first time i registered, the little yellow symbol never went away and i was freaking out thinking that NO ONE was visiting my shop! however, i just deleted the website profile and added it again. i received a new code and i went to etsy and put the new code into the "web analytics" area. and it's worked fine ever since.

now i can't stop checking my stats. sigh. oh well, at least it's another thing to do while i'm off on maternity leave!