Why you need Google Analytics for your Webflow site
Google Analytics provides useful information such as the number of users and pageviews a website receives, what amount of time visitors spend on the site or web page, and how many of them leave without clicking on additional links (this metric is called bounce rate). You may also check where your site's visitors come from using this tool. That’s why it’s extremely important to integrate Google Analytics to Webflow.
Here are the main benefits you’ll get after starting to use Google Analytics:
- You’ll learn how much time people spend on particular web pages
- You’ll have an opportunity to know how many people leave without interacting with content
- You’ll see where most of the traffic comes from
- And so much more.
You have an opportunity to integrate this powerful analytical tool directly to Webflow, but before you do this, you should first create a Google account and sign up for Google Analytics.
Before you begin: sign up for Google Analytics
If you have already registered at Google, you can proceed with the following steps to open a new Analytics account. To start it over, - sign up here.
Here’s what you’ll have to do:
- Head for Google Analytics and log in with your Google account.
- In the left sidebar, find ‘Admin’.
- In the left drop-down list click ‘Create new account’.
- After this, the setup page of the created account will appear.
- Fill in all the fields required and click ‘Save’.
- Done! You’ve successfully created a Google Analytics account!
Google Platform is powerful in many ways and especially in collecting customer opinions. Thus, you can also embed Google reviews on any website.
The next step is to get a Universal Analytics tracking ID.
How to get Google Analytics Tracking ID
- If you already have a Google account, click the ‘Admin’ tab, if you’re not logged in - do it.
- Ensure that the correct ‘Account’ and ‘Property’ are picked.
- After you’ve done it, go to the 'Tracking Info', select 'Tracking Code' and there you’ll be able to see the Tracking ID of yours.
- Copy it and paste it in the Google Analytics Account Number field.
- Save the changes.
Remember that in certain cases it requires up to 24 hours for your Webflow stats to retrieve to Google Analytics. After it’s finished, you can go ahead to using the tool and getting profitable insights for your website stats.
At that point we’ll find out how you can make sure if your event tracking is working appropriately.
How to check if Google Analytics event tracking is working
In individual cases, validating the event data can be done manually. If you see 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 fairly difficult mission. If you’re doubtful if the setup of the event was performed properly or if your Webflow website is really busy, then distinguishing any positive effect of your alterations becomes nearly unachievable. Making certain that the event tracking is working on your website is an essential part of employing Google Analytics. And Google has a tool to make it easier for you to find out all the errors. This instrument is called Google Analytics Debugger. It is a Chrome extension which can be simply found on the Chrome web store.
After installation, go to the page where you have set up Google events. Right click any element of the web page to open the console, and after that click the console tab. Further, follow these steps:
- Hit the plugin icon. This will enable it.
- The page will be refreshed and the console will be full of.
- If you’re seeing it, everything works fine.
- If you wish to have it in a pure state, click the 'Clear Console' button in the top left.
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.
So, after you’ve learned how to sign up and get tracking ID, here’s a brief instruction on how you can add Analytics to a project.
How to add Google Analytics to a Webflow project
You can find Google Analytics settings on the Project settings page, after clicking it you should go to the Integrations page. Here’s how to add Analytics to Webflow:
- Get your Tracking ID in Google Analytics (see the instruction above).
- Copy the Tracking (Measurement) ID.
- In the Webflow dashboard, access Google Analytics of the project.
- Paste ID you’ve got in your Google account to the Google Analytics Tracking ID field.
- Save and press Publish.
That’s how easy it is to integrate Google Analytics to Webflow. The next step is to see what parameters you can explore with the help of this instrument.
How to find the most popular pages on Google Analytics
After you can view the statistics on your Webflow website and you’ve found, it's the perfect time to check what pages get the most views per year. First, find the 'Behaviour' section in the left sidebar. Click it and choose 'Site content', then go to 'All pages'.
You’ll see a report for all of your pages and the overall number of page views. Keep in mind that a page view only stands for the fact that the Webflow page was loaded by a browser. It’s an initial way of measuring your popularity, but it will help you to quickly reveal the top pieces of content. All you‘ll have to do is to look through the list of the most popular pages of your website and feature the needed ones.
After you get through the essentials, let’s check if Google Analytics is working properly on your site.
How to check if Google Analytics is working
Implementing the Analytics on your Webflow site correctly is critical as it can’t bring together stats correctly if something was done improperly. The first thing you are to double-check is the tracking code - it needs to be live on your website. Here you’ll need Google Analytics Debugger.
You can use Google Analytics to troubleshoot your tracking code as well.
As we mentioned, the extension can be discovered on Google Chrome Web Store. If you haven’t installed, do it, it yet and then follow this easy guide:
- Open the website you need to test.
- To turn the Debugger on, click on the Debugger icon in your browser.
- To open the JavaScript console in Chrome, press 'Ctrl-Shift-J'.
- Click the 'Console' section to look through the info about your Analytics code and check if it contains any messages about errors.
You can find a bunch of other extensions for different browsers, for instance, Ghostery or Analytics Debugger. Install them to prevent your work with Analytics from any bother.
After checking the work of Analytics, start tracking some more advanced indicators for your Webflow site.
What is the bounce rate in Google Analytics and why you should track it
Bounce rate in GA signifies an event when a user lands on a website page and then leaves without triggering another request to GA, in particular opening some other pages, reading Webflow Google reviews, clicking call-to-actions, and so on. Therefore, if a user visits your web page from search, then walks through the page, but does not interact with your website in any other considerable way or click any internal links, then such a user is considered to be bounced.
As a result, bounce rate is defined as the percentage of sessions that result in bounce - sessions that start and end on a single page. Each page’s bounce rate affects the site's overall bounce rate.
There are certain strategies to improve your bounce rate and all of them include adding new elements of the interface. For example, a section or page with Google Reviews.
Find information on bounce rates of your Webflow website on the Conversion, Acquisition, and Behavior tabs of the Google Analytics left sidebar.
Are there any differences between bounce rate and escape rate in Google Analytics?
You may have noticed that some reports in Google Analytics include the Escape rate metric. It doesn't equal the Bounce rate and here’s why.
Bounce rate shows up in the report in case a sole page session occurs on your Webflow site. In contrast, if a user lands on your ecommerce site page, then goes to the product page or to the shopping cart and exits, this exit affects Exit rate.
Why should I track my website’s bounce rates?
Bounce rate is a crucial metric for understanding in what way your site visitors use some specific pages on the website. Aware of it, you can upgrade your marketing strategies by requesting Analytics to motivate your users to interact with your Webflow website pages.
Bear in mind that in some cases great bounce rates are not inevitably an awful thing. These are the reasons for it:
- It’s ok if your bounce rates are high if you have a single-page website. For instance, it can be a landing page for a brick-and-mortar shop, or if your website content is meant for a single-page session.
- High bounce rates are not good for sites that are depending on users’ visiting more than one page - ecommerce first of all.
After discovering the best solution on lowering (or not) your bounce rates on your Webflow site, it’s time to see how you can take advantage of some other Analytics features. Such as URLs of tracking campaigns.
How to to find tagged URL data in Google Analytics
Tagging URLs with UTM codes helps web administrators identify some specific referral sources in Analytics for your Webflow website. By means of this feature, you can separate visitors referred to specific campaigns to get better comprehension of their behaviour patterns and form more precise lists of audience.
If you wish to apply URLs with UTMs across your marketing campaigns, you’ll need to know where to look exactly in Analytics to explore the info the tags are delivering.
If everything is prepared correctly, go to the Acquisition section in the left sidebar of the Google Analytics, then select Campaigns and click on All Campaigns:
All the information there will be parted by the campaign name. Bear in mind that if your campaign has received zero clicks, this URL won’t be mentioned in the report until it gets at least one click.