How to add and use Google Analytics on Squarespace

Each Squarespace website owner has an opportunity to connect their site to Google Analytics for visitor tracking and reporting. First thing you need for the start here is to get a Google Analytics account - sign up here. Keep in mind that there’s no need to add a separate script code to use Analytics on your Squarespace website - it’s a built-in integration.

Why you might need Google Analytics for your Squarespace site

You might not want to ignore using Google Analytics for tracking your website's progress as there are always differences between two tracking systems. And here’s how Squarespace analytics platform differs from Google Analytics:

• Squarespace does not count internal traffic when you’re logged in your website. On the contrary, Google does, and you are free to set up filters to exclude some IPs.
• Google Analytics and Squarespace have different approaches to filtering non-human traffic.
• Regardless of your audience size, numbers are always calculated from your full visitor activity on Squarespace. Google estimates some numbers based on a sample of visitors.
• Squarespace identifies a referrer based on a visitor’s last click while Google Analytics does the same, but with some exceptions. These exceptions may result in greater Direct traffic numbers on Squarespace.
• Squarespace identifies visitors by location, and so does Analytics, but there are differences in the way each service records IP addresses. That’s why there might be  discrepancies between locations on Squarespace Analytics and Google Analytics.

Keeping these facts in mind, you’ll get a full picture of your website’s overall performance and state.

Before you begin: create Google Analytics account

If you already have a Google profile, you can follow the steps given below to add a new Analytics account.
Here’s what you are to do:

1. Go to Google Analytics and click the Login button.
2. Find “Admin” at the bottom of your left sidebar.
3. See the left drop-down list and click “Create new account”.
4. The setup page of your new Analytics account will appear.
5. Insert all the data requested and save your edits.
6. Your new GA account has been successfully created.

Then, you’ll need a Universal Analytics tracking ID.

In case you have a business Google account, you might benefit from positive Google Reviews displayed right on your website

How to get Google Analytics Tracking ID

If you aren’t logged in your Google account, do it, and then click the “Admin” tab at the top of the page. After that, follow these easy steps:

• Ensure that the correct “Account” and “Property” are selected.
• After you’ve done it, click on the “Tracking Info”, select “Tracking Code” and you’ll see your “Tracking ID”.
• Copy the Tracking ID and enter it in the Google Analytics Account Number field.
• Save the changes.

Keep in mind that sometimes it takes up to 24 hours for the statistics on your Squarespace website to add in Google Analytics. After it’s finished, you can proceed to using the tool and getting helpful insights in your website’s statistics.

Now let’s see how you can make sure if your event tracking is working correctly.

How to check if Google Analytics event tracking is working

In some cases, validating the event data can be done manually. If you’ve noticed that your website is suspiciously low on visitors, then go to the “Real Time > Events” panel in the Analytics and double check if everything’s ok.
Sometimes it can be a rather tricky task. If you’re still unsure if the event setup was performed correctly or if your Squarespace website is really busy, then identifying some positive effect of your changes becomes an impossible thing.

Making sure that the event tracking is working on your website is an essential part of using Google Analytics. And Google has a tool to make it easier for you to find this out. It’s called Google Analytics Debugger. It is a Chrome extension which can be easily found on the Chrome web store.

After installing it to your browser, go to the page where you have set up Google events. Then open the console by performing right click -> inspect element, and after click the console tab. Then, follow these steps:

1. Click the plugin icon in the taskbar. This will enable the plugin.
2. The page will be refreshed and the console will be filled with lots of data.
3. If you’re seeing this, everything works fine.
4. Find the “Clear Console” button in the top left corner and perform the event. This will give you a clean state.

It’s better to spend some time on researching the console and its work as it will be of a really great help in understanding what data exactly is being sent to Analytics.

How to find the most popular pages on Google Analytics

After your Tracking ID has been found and the stats on your Squarespace website can be viewed, it’s time to observe what pages received the most views per year. First, look at the left sidebar and find the “Behavior” section. Click it, then select “Site content” - “All pages”.

You’ll see a generated report for all of your content and the total number of page views that were received by your content. Keep in mind that a page view only stands for the fact that the Squarespace page has been loaded by a browser. It’s an initial way of measuring your popularity, but it will help you quickly reveal your top pieces of content. All that is left for you to do is to look through the list of the most popular pages of your website and choose the ones you’d like to feature.

Now that you understand the basics, let’s see how you can check if Google Analytics is working properly on your website.

How to check if Google Analytics is working

Implementing the Analytics tool on your Squarespace website correctly is important as it can’t gather statistics correctly if something was done wrong. And the first thing you might want to double-check if something went wrong is the tracking code - it must be active on your site. Here you’ll also need Google Analytics Debugger.

Users who have faced some issues with the work of Google Analytics on their websites, can use this tool to troubleshoot their tracking code as well.

As we already mentioned above, the extension can be found on Google’s Chrome Web Store. If you haven’t installed it yet, do it, and then follow this easy guide:

1. Open the website that needs to be tested.
2. Click the Debugger icon at the top right corner of the browser to turn it on.
3. Press “Ctrl-Shift-J” to open the Chrome JavaScript console.
4. Click the “Console” section to look through the info about your Analytics code and check if it contains any messages about errors.

For other browsers there are also a bunch of plugins created, for example, Ghostery or Analytics Debugger. Install them to prevent your work with Analytics from any inconveniences.

After you’ve made sure everything works correctly, you can start tracking some more advanced metrics for your Squarespace site.

What is the bounce rate in Google Analytics and why you should track it

Bounce rate in GA stands for a situation when a user lands on a Squarespace website page and then exists without triggering another request to Analytics, such as opening some other pages, clicking call-to-actions and so on. So, if a user opens your website’s page from search, then browses the page, but does not click any internal links or interact with your website in some other meaningful way, then such a user is considered as a bounced one.

So, bounce rate is defined as the percentage of sessions that result in bounce - sessions that begin and end on the same page. It's a really important metric as each page’s bounce rate affects the site's overall bounce rate.

You can find info on bounce rates of your Squarespace website in the Acquisition, Behavior, and Conversion tabs of the Google Analytics left sidebar.

Consider adding some UI elements like Squarespace Google Reviews plugin to elevate user engagement on your website.

Is there any difference between bounce rate and escape rate in Google Analytics?

Some reports in Google Analytics include the Escape rate metric. It’s not the same as the Bounce rate and here’s why.

Bounce rate is only reported in the event of a single page session occurrence on your Squarespace site. On the contrary, if a user lands on your ecommerce site’s page, then moves to the product page or to the shopping cart and leaves, this exit affects Exit rate.

Why is it important to track your website’s bounce rates?

Bounce rate is a crucial metric for understanding how your website visitors use some individual pages on your website. Knowing it, you can optimize your marketing strategies applying Analytics to motivate your users to interact with your Squarespace website pages.

Keep in mind that in some cases high bounce rates are not necessarily a bad thing. Here’s why:

• It’s ok to have high bounce rates if you have a single-page website. For example, it can be a landing page for a brick-and-mortar shop, or if you have content that is meant for single-page sessions.
• High bounce rates are not good for sites that are depending on users visiting more than one page - ecommerce first of all.

If you are searching for ways to improve the bounce rate and visitor engagement, consider changing the site structure, adding new blocks, etc. For example, you can embed Google reviews on any website.

After you’ve come up with the best strategy on lowering (or not) your bounce rates on your Squarespace site, there’s time to see how you can use some other Analytics features. For example, tracking campaign URLs.

How to find tagged URL data in Google Analytics

Tagging URLs with UTM codes helps marketers identify some particular referral sources in Google Analytics for your Squarespace website. By means of this feature, you can isolate visitors referred from specific campaigns to better understand their behavior patterns and also form more thorough audience lists.

So, if you’ve decided to start applying tagging URLs with UTMs across some of your marketing campaigns, you’ll need to know where to look exactly in Analytics to see the info the tags are delivering.

If everything was set up correctly, go to the Acquisition section in the left sidebar of the Google Analytics then choose Campaigns and go to All Campaigns. All the info there will be broken down by the campaign name. Keep in mind that if your campaigns haven’t received any clicks, those URLs won’t be mentioned in the reports until they’ve been clicked.

Google Analytics with Ajax loading

For Squarespace version 7.0 websites with templates using Ajax loading Analytics won’t register all of the site's traffic. Due to an issue, Ajax interferes with Analytics and only logs the first page a user lands on. As the visitor navigates the website, Analytics won’t register their traffic until they refresh the page. This problem can be solved by disabling Ajax loading.

How to disable Ajax loading on Squarespace website

Ajax can be disabled in the Site Styles section, but with some exceptions which include:

• It can’t be disabled in the Skye family templates.
• It can’t be disabled for the blog landing pages in the Farro family. Even if you uncheck Enable Ajax Loading, Ajax will still be used to load the Blog page on your website.

Now, to enable or disable Ajax follow these steps:

1. Go to the Home Menu, then click the Design, and after click the Site Styles.
2. Scroll down until you see Site: Loading.
3. Check or uncheck the Enable Ajax Loading feature.