How to Set up and Install Google Analytics 4
Creating a Google Analytics 4 Property & Data Stream
Let’s start your journey into Google Analytics 4 with the essential first step – creating a new property.
Navigate to the Admin Section:
Begin by accessing the Admin section of your Google Analytics interface. You can do this by clicking on “Admin” in the lower-left corner of your dashboard.
Once inside the Admin section, use the drop down menu in the top left hand side of the page to create a new property.
If you’re new to Google Analytics and haven’t worked with it before, head over to analytics.google.com and follow the steps to create your Google Analytics account.
Property Information:
Now, you’ll need to enter some fundamental information about your property. This could be the name of your website, your company, or a specific brand. Additionally, select your company’s country, reporting time zone, and the primary currency your business operates in.
Setting Objectives:
After filling in the basic details, proceed to the next step where you’ll be asked a series of questions. These questions are designed to help you define your business objectives, which will impact the reports you see in the interface. For simplicity at this stage, select “Get baseline reports.”
Create Your Property:
Click the “Create” button to finalise the creation of your property.
Configuring Your Data Stream:
The next crucial step is configuring your first data stream. A data stream is essentially a data source from which events will be sent to your Google Analytics 4 property. Keep in mind that you can have multiple data sources within a single property, such as different web properties, Android apps, or iOS apps.
For the purpose of this blog post, we’ll focus on setting up a Web stream.
Enter Your Website Details:
Provide the URL of your website (e.g., https://www.mywebsite.com). Note that the protocol (https) is already selected. Additionally, enter the name of your website.
Enhanced Measurement:
Google Analytics 4 offers an Enhanced Measurement feature that simplifies event tracking for marketers. It automatically tracks various events to populate your reports without the need for developer assistance or configuring them in Google Tag Manager.
By default, this feature is enabled and tracks events such as page views, scrolls, outbound link clicks, site searches, video engagement, file downloads, and form events. You can toggle these events on or off individually by clicking the gear icon in the Enhanced Measurement section.
Create Your Stream:
When you’re ready, hit the “Create stream” button to complete the setup.
Congratulations! You’ve successfully taken the initial steps in setting up Google Analytics 4 with your property and data stream. As you delve deeper into this tool, you’ll uncover more advanced features and reporting options that can provide valuable insights for your marketing efforts.
Install Google Analytics 4 with the native tracking code
If you are working with a website, that does not have a native GA4 integration or doesn’t support GA4 plugins, then you can ask the developer to install the native GA4 tracking code directly in the source code of the website.
In GA4 Admin > Data Collection and modification >Data Streams, select your Web Data Stream.
Then click View tag instructions.
Then select Install manually and copy the code that you’ll get:
You should give that code to a developer and ask him/her to install this code in the <head> section of *all* pages of your website. The developer will know what this means.
Done!
The next step is to test your set up, which will be covered in a future blog post.
