Adding Google Analytics to your website

Google Analytics counts the visits to your website in your own Google Analytics account. You turn it on from your website’s dashboard, by entering one id on its Settings tab. There is nothing to add to your pages, and every visitor is asked before anything is counted.

• A Google Analytics property for your website, with a web data stream for its address, set up in your own Google account, where its visits are yours to see.
• A privacy notice that says you use Google Analytics: the next section says what it needs.

The bar that asks your visitors links to your privacy notice, and it is where they read what they are agreeing to. Before you turn Google Analytics on, your notice should say that you use it, and give visitors a link that shows the bar again, so they can change their answer.

If yours does not say so yet, email Stevie the words to add, as for any change to a page, or attach the new version if your notice is a document. Without Stevie, it is a change we quote. The help centre’s own privacy notice has the section we use, link included, if an example helps.

In Google Analytics, open Admin, then Data streams, and choose your website’s stream on the Web tab. If there is none yet, press Add stream, choose Web and give your website’s address. The Measurement ID is at the top of the stream’s details. It starts with G- and looks like G-XXXXXXXXXX.

1. Sign in to your website’s dashboard, as Your website’s dashboard says.
2. Open the Settings tab and press Change beside Google Analytics.
3. Enter your id under Measurement id and press Save.

The Google Analytics row shows the id and where it stands. It reads Updating, then On your website, usually within a few minutes. From then on, visits to your website at your own domain are counted in Google Analytics once a visitor agrees.

Each of your websites has its own Settings tab, so a business with more than one website sets each one.

• Updating: saved, and on its way to your website.
• On your website: your website carries it.
• Off: not set, or after Turn off, your website no longer carries it.
• Could not be applied: Stillsite support has been told. Press Change, then Try again to send it once more.
• Not checked yet: it is saved, but whether it is on your website yet could not be checked just now; look again in a few minutes.

To change the id, press Change, enter the new one and press Save. Turn off, in the same window, takes Google Analytics off your website in the same way: the row reads Updating until the change reaches your website, then Off.

Once it is on your website, a bar at the foot of the page says the site uses Google Analytics to count visits, links to your privacy notice, and offers Accept or Decline. Nothing is counted, and Google Analytics sets no cookie, until a visitor presses Accept. Decline changes nothing about the site. The answer is remembered in that browser for a year, and the link in your privacy notice lets a visitor change it at any time.

The bar shows on your website at your own domain only. Until your domain is connected to your new site, the last step of your move, your new website is on its private address: no bar shows there and nothing is counted, even when the row says On your website. A preview of a change shows no bar and counts nothing either, so looking at a preview is never a visit.

The website’s Owner can set, change or turn off the id: the levels are in Who can see and change your website. Only they see the Settings tab; anyone else who can see the dashboard does not.

It cannot be changed by emailing Stevie. It is set on the dashboard alone, by someone signed in with that access. While your website is still being built, it cannot be set yet.

If the row says Not available, Google Analytics is not available for this website’s design yet: ask through the support form.