How to Install Google Analytics on Your Joomla Site Powered by Helix
Are you monitoring your web traffic? If not, this should be your top priority! Tracking website traffic is very important. Whether you are running an online business or a personal blog, monitoring and acting on your web traffic is vital to your success. Mindless optimization without paying attention to areas that truly matter is not going to do any good to improve your traffic.
And if you have been doing some amount of research on website traffic, you probably have heard of Google Analytics already. Today, we will walk you through the process of installing Google Analytics on your Joomla site powered by Helix. Let’s get started!
What is Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a web analytics service offered by Google that gives you an in-depth look at your website traffic. If you want to analyze your site traffic and act on it, Google Analytics is a great fit! The first question that might come to your mind - is it free? It has both a free and a paid version. But the good news is if you run a small or medium-sized business, you are likely to get all the features from the free version. No wonder it is often called a “freemium” service!
What Does Google Analytics Do
So, what exactly does Google Analytics do for you? Google Analytics gives you statistics that can be used to analyze and improve your website’s conversion, content, and user experience. Some of the awesome things you can do with Google Analytics are:
- See your important analytics and data
- Find out which campaigns and events bring out the most results
- Find out where your visitors are coming from
- View real-time traffic scenario
- Identify your top content
- Find out the click rates on your CTAs
- Identify your worst performing pages and more
Now, that you know what Google Analytics is and how it works, it’s time to enjoy the benefits. Let’s see what steps you will need to follow to set up Google Analytics on your Joomla site powered by the Helix framework.
Get the Google Analytics Tracking Code
Google Analytics tracks all of its data by a Tracking Code called the Global Site Tag (gtag.js). This provides a framework for streamlined web page tagging – giving you better control while making the implementation easier.
Let’s find out how to get a Global Site Tag for your website.
Step 1: Sign in to your Google account from the browser
Step 2: Visit https://analytics.google.com
Step 3: Click on the ‘Start measuring’ button to create an account
Step 4: Enter your website name, website URL, industry category, reporting time zone, and click “Create”
Step 5: Agree to the Google Data Processing & Protection Terms, and click “I Accept”
On the next screen, you will be presented with a Google Analytics tracking code. Now all that’s left to do is install it on your Joomla website.
Add Google Analytics to Your Joomla Template
Helix has been thriving as the best Joomla template framework since the very beginning. It is universally loved and most of our templates are powered by Helix Ultimate and Helix 3. Installing Google Analytics to Helix powered templates is pretty simple and easy to do!
There’s a slight difference in the user interface, which is why we are going to break down the process for both frameworks.
For Helix 3 Based Templates:
- Copy the Global Site Tag from the previous step
- Go to the Administrator Dashboard of your Joomla site
- From Extensions > Templates > Styles select the default template of your Joomla site
- Select the Custom Code tab
- Paste the Global Site Tag into the Before </body> field
- Save and you’re done!
For Helix Ultimate Based Templates:
- Copy the Global Site Tag of Google Analytics
- Go to the Administrator Dashboard of your Joomla site
- From Extensions > Templates > Styles select your template from the template list
- Click on the Template Options button
- Select the Advanced tab in the vertical menu
- Click on Analytics and paste the Global Site Tag in the Google Analytics 4 Tracking ID field
- Save and you’re done!
Check Your Results
Congratulations if you have come this far! Now, we need to make sure Google is accepting your tracking code and successfully tracking your website data. The easiest way to check that is to go to your Google Analytics account and click on “Real-time”. Here you can see your statistics regarding the number of visitors, top pages, top referrals, keywords, etc. Give a read to our article on how to drive more web traffic and boost conversion on Joomla sites for more in-depth knowledge on website traffic.
Summing Up
All the efforts you put into search engine optimizations will mean nothing if your website is not performing consistently. And to improve consistency, we need to monitor our website traffic and emphasize finding out “what works”. Google Analytics is an amazing tool to get a report on your traffic sources, keyword volume, top content, etc. It will not only give you an insight into your website performance but help you understand your customers better and optimize things that truly matter. All of these for free, so what’s the wait?!
Let us know your queries and feedback in the comments section. We are all ears!
Zareen Tasnim
