60-Second Solution: Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a powerful statistics and tool for tracking website visitors. Any web site manager serious about understanding how their visitors use their site needs to be using

Register for Google Analytics, create a new GA account, then register a property for that account. This is useful if you want to track different usages separately, for instance one for your web site, one for your mobile site, another for an app, and so on.

Next you’ll be given some Javascript code to insert into your webpage. Alternatively, you can use a WordPress plugin to manage your GA settings, and simply give it the Tracking ID of the property you set up for your site.

Google Analytics has a lag of a day for historical data, but it also has a real-time view which is fun to watch site traffic as it happens, especially after a big marketing launch.

Once you learn your way around the GA system, you’ll find enhancements such as linking it to your Google Webmaster Tools account and adding social settings to your tracking data. The more you learn about this important tool in your web site management toolbox, the more you’ll wonder how you ever got along without it.