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Every website in the world should have Google Analytics connected in 2025. This is a vital, free website analytics tool that allows you to understand how visitors interact with your site, how your marketing campaigns are performing, and ultimately, how you can improve business performance through important online data. So, in this updated Google Analytics tutorial, we're going to dive into this free analytics tool and help you become familiar with key metrics, tools, and features so that you can better understand and identify opportunities on how to optimize your online and business performance in 2025.
Okay, so with that covered, let's jump over to my computer and dive into Google Analytics. Here we are inside one of my Google Analytics accounts. Now, to arrive here, simply head over to your browser and type in analytics.google.com, and that's going to take you here. This is if you've already set up Google Analytics for your website or app. Now, this tutorial is for those that have already connected their website or app with Google Analytics. If you're yet to do this—maybe you have a Wix website, a Shopify store, or a WordPress blog—then what I'll do is add the relevant tutorials down below that will help you navigate through the process of connecting your platform with Google Analytics. Today, I'll share the essentials that I use every day inside Google Analytics across my different accounts. I manage multiple Google Analytics accounts every day, from small business websites to e-commerce stores and blogs, and these websites connected to Google Analytics are built with Shopify, WordPress, Wix, and others. So, no matter what type of website or business that you operate, this Google Analytics tutorial is going to be beneficial to you.
Okay, so as I mentioned, once you have set up and connected your Google Analytics account with your website or app, you'll be taken here, and this is your home interface. If we navigate up to "All Accounts," this is where you can choose the account that you want to switch to. And within each of these accounts, you have these properties. Okay, so let's break down accounts and properties. Again, on the left-hand side, we have accounts. Think of these as your separate business accounts. You can see Stuart Gold is a separate brand; we have CIO, which is a separate business, as well as The Trendy Kiwi NZ and others. And within these accounts, we have these properties, which essentially are the data streams connected to our Google Analytics account. So, if I click on Stuart Gold, that's going to take me to this Google Analytics account that I set up for my Stuart Gold brand. However, for the purpose of today's tutorial, I'm going to navigate back over to Shopify and focus on this Google Analytics property. So again, this is the data stream that's connected to our Shopify CRM Shopify store. Now, your home dashboard may look slightly different, but don't worry; this changes based on what's important to your business. I'll dive into all the key metrics, widgets, and reports.
Okay, so let's quickly take a look at the home dashboard snapshot. You'll spend most of your time here under "Home," as well as inside reports. Okay, so let's take a look at "Home." Down here, we have a snapshot of key events happening on our website. We can also navigate down here and change the default date range. For example, let's navigate over to "Last 90 days," or we can navigate down to the date range and add a custom date range. I want to navigate down here and see a snapshot of our website's performance over the last 7 days. Now, down here, you can see key metrics like active users, purchase revenue over the last 7 days. This is because this is a Shopify store, the number of sessions and purchases. Now, you can change these items if you like. For example, under "Suggested," let's say I wanted to see "New users," and that's going to change "Sessions" to "New users." Now, "Active users" is how many active users we've had on our website over the last 7 days. Out of 891, 833 are new users; they have never visited our store before. Now, if I change this back to "Sessions," down here you'll notice "Sessions" are higher, and "Sessions" are always going to be higher than "Active users." For example, let's say you had one active user that navigated through the different pages on your website—maybe they visited the contact page, then your "About" page, and then a product page. That means that one user had three sessions. And again, we have purchases over the last 7 days. Now, Google Analytics 4 is highly data-driven and report-focused, and each of these snapshots takes you to a more detailed report.
Okay, let's navigate over to "Active users in the last 30 minutes." Here we can see a snapshot of users over the last 30 minutes on our website. Here we can see the country that they're from, as well as how many active users from those countries. We can change this item, this metric, if we like. Let's hit "Town and City." This would be relevant to you if your business operates in a specific geographical location, like a country town or region. Again, we can change this item, "Active users," to "New users" if we like. And down here, we can view the real-time report. If we click here, that's going to give us a more in-depth overview of current users on our website. Here we have "Active users in the last 30 minutes," "Active users in the last 5 minutes," and here we have "Active users by first user source," and we can change these items if we like. Simply click on the drop-down. For example, over here we have "Views by Page title and screen name." So down here, we've had three users that have visited this page, which is a product page, and two users over the last 30 minutes that have visited this homepage.
Okay, let's navigate back home, and that's going to take us to this home dashboard. Now, over on the far right-hand side, we can click on "Insights," and here we can quickly gain insights using analytics intelligence, which will give us key performance metrics that we're after. For example, let's navigate down to "Basic performance." Here we have a few suggestions: How many users did I have last week? What are my top pages and screens by view? And these are snapshots of data coming from our different reports across Google Analytics. For example, let's see what our top events are by user and over the last 7 days. Here we can see the event name and the number of users. Now, an event on your website or app is any particular action that a visitor makes. That could be viewing a page, their first visit to your website, engaging with a specific element on your website, submitting a form, adding a product to your cart, beginning a checkout, or making a purchase. These are different types of events happening on your website or app.
Okay, let's navigate back down to "Suggested questions." Now let's navigate up to "Technology." Here we can quickly gain some key insights in regards to technology: What devices are used the most? What browsers are used the most? What platforms are used the most? So, as you can see, this is a great way—these insights on your homepage—to quickly obtain key insights. Let's navigate down to "What browsers are used the most," and again, that's going to be based on this period. If I want to change this, all I need to do is change the date range over here. Over the last 7 days, you can see Chrome was the most popular browser, then Safari, Edge, and Firefox.
Okay, so let's close out of "Insights." Hey guys, just quickly, did you know that over 90% of you that enjoy our free educational content have not yet subscribed? It would mean a lot to me if you drop a comment or hit subscribe if you love what I'm creating. This helps us grow the channel and motivates me to create bigger and more impactful tutorials for you to consume for free.
Okay, so that happy note, thank you in advance, and let's get back to the video and navigate down the page. Here we have "Recently accessed"—these are the different reports that I've accessed recently, and this allows you to quickly jump over to those reports—and then we have "Suggested for you." Again, these reports and widgets are going to be different on your interface.
Okay, so let's navigate back up to the top and navigate over to the left-hand, hand side and locate "Reports." Under "Report snapshot," here we can see a snapshot of all our reports, and then each of these widgets are going to take you to the full report. Again, we can navigate up to the top, and we can change the date range, and what we can also do is actually create a comparison. Navigate down to "Compare," and we can compare the previous 30 days, and you can see the comparison up here. We're comparing this current date range, January 7th to February 3rd, with December 10th through to January 6th, and here we can see the performance change from that comparison. For me, you can see that my revenue has increased by 12.4% over the last 28-day period. Let's navigate up here and turn off the comparison and hit "Apply." Now, you can also customize each of your reports. We're currently on the report snapshot. What we can do is navigate over to "Customize report," and we can move these different cards around if we like, and that's going to change the layout of this report. Again, I'm going to move "Insights" down here, and if there's any card or widget you don't like and you want to remove from this report, simply click on the X. And you can also add a card down here. Here we have summary cards under "Business objectives," "Active users based on language," "Active users based on town/city." If we navigate down, we have lifecycle cards and users down here. Let's close out of this and navigate back up to the top and click on "Save." Now we can save changes to the current report or save as a new report. I'm going to save the changes I made to the current report, then navigate back.
Now let's navigate down to "Understand web or app traffic," and let's click on "Overview." Again, here we have an overview of our web or app traffic, like "Active users by country." Again, we can change this if we like, "Active users by town/city." If we navigate down the page, we can see the average engagement time per user on our website, the different events happening on our website, and then we have "Views by Page title and Screen class." Now let's navigate down here. We can either click "View pages and screens" or we can click on "Pages and screens" over here, and this is going to generate a report based on the traffic to our website. Here we can see the website pages down here; these are our top website pages, and then we have metrics over here. For example, over the last 28-day period, this page here, which is a product page for our Shopify Google Sheets CRM template, this has had the most traffic. The average engagement on that page is 36 seconds. If we navigate across, we have the total event count and more over here. Now let's go ahead and customize this report. Here we have two options: We have "Dimensions" and "Metrics." If we click on "Dimensions" here, we have our primary dimensions, and you can see that over here. For example, if I click on this drop-down, we have these four dimensions. We can add another dimension here if we like. For example, if I click here, I can click on "First user source and medium," then hit "Apply." Now let's navigate over to "Metrics," and here we have key metrics. What I'm going to do is delete this "Key events" and "Total revenue," and then add a new metric. I'm going to click "E-commerce purchases," "Bounce rate," and let's say "Add to baskets," and then click on "Apply." Then, when you've made any changes, go ahead, click on "Save." You have these two options again: "Save changes to current report" or "Save as new report." I'm going to save as current report, and then click on "Save," and let's navigate back, and that's going to update those metrics down here.
Let's now navigate over to "Acquisition" and click on "Traffic acquisition." Here we can see important traffic acquisition over the last 30 days. So here we have "Organic search"—so people searching for our brand, products, or services on search engines. This is the number one way that we acquire traffic. "Organic video"—people watch a video, say on YouTube, and then they jump over to our website. "Direct"—that's someone typing in our business name directly into Google. "Organic social"—from social media. "Referrals"—from other sites. And we have more channels over here. Now, what we can do is click up here and click on "Session Source/Medium." If we navigate down here, this gives us a breakdown of where our traffic is coming from. So the session source is Google, and the medium is organic. So the majority of our visitors are finding us on Google search. Then we have "Referral"—the second most common way that we acquire traffic is from YouTube, and this is because we produce videos on YouTube for our business. Then "Direct," and this would be someone clicking on our name directly. Then two other referral mediums for driving traffic is from Reddit and our Stuart Gold website. Again, what we can do is navigate across these different metrics, and we can change the metric type. For example, this is all events. Let's go ahead and select "Purchase," and you can see now, through this channel, the session source Google and the medium, which is organic, over the last 28 days, we've had 28 sales from this traffic source. Organic YouTube was 18, direct was six, Reddit generated four sales, and from our Stuart Gold website, this generated three sales. So traffic coming from these different channels, these different sources, resulted in these purchases. Again, we can see the total revenue over here, and if we like, we can navigate up to the top right-hand corner and customize this report again, like I mentioned. We can change the dimensions, or we can navigate back and change the metrics. So what are the key metrics that you want to measure for each of your different reports? Maybe it's capturing a form, maybe it's your visitors watching a specific video. You can add those events, those metrics down here.
Okay, let's close out of that and hit "Back." Now let's navigate down to "Drive sales and conversions" and click on "Purchase Journey." Hey, just quickly, before you get back into this tutorial, if you're getting value from this video, please drop a like and subscribe. This means a lot to me and ultimately helps us reach and help more small business owners across YouTube. Thank you in advance, and with that quick note, let's jump back into this video. This report here, "Purchase Journey," is important for this Google Analytics account; this is because this is an e-commerce store, and this is the purchase journey that is super important to understand. This allows us to optimize the different stages in the purchase journey or the customer journey. For example, the first step: 100% of our users will start a session on our website, and this is over the last 28-day period. Again, we can change this if we like. Then, out of those 3.5k users over the last 30 days, only 55% of those users—that's 1.9k—end up viewing a product. Then, out of those users that view a product, the 1.9k users, only 6% of those users, which is 114, add a product to cart. And out of those 114 users, 71%, or 82 users, begin the checkout. Then, out of the that begin the checkout—so out of the 82 users that begin the checkout over the last 28 days—61% of those users convert, which ends up being 50 users out of 82 that begin the checkout. Now, this tells me that there is a significant drop-off when it comes to adding products to basket or adding products to cart. You can see 1.9 users view a product, but then only 6% of those users add a product to their cart. So what we want to do is increase this, and that's ultimately going to increase "Begin checkout" and increase the number of purchases. However, it looks like for this particular website that we need to optimize step three, "Add to basket," and there's a few ways we can do that. For example, on Shopify, just quickly, I could add more social proof on my different product pages, so these could be testimonials or reviews, which will ultimately increase the add-to-cart rate. I would also want to optimize my product pages; maybe the add-to-cart button is not easily visible or it has the wrong colors. Essentially, what I'd want to do is optimize my product page and optimize the add-to-cart rate. Again, if we navigate down here, we can see the device category; the majority of users are coming from desktop and then mobile. I would also want to make sure that my mobile is optimized for adding products to cart. Now we can navigate over to "Device category" and choose something like "Language," and if we navigate down here, you can see these are my top languages in terms of my website visitors: English, Spanish, French, and Russian. And then we have important metrics over here. Again, we can change these if we like and customize this report if we want to. Now, what I might want to do here is optimize my website for Spanish and French; however, the majority of my users are English-speaking, so I'm happy with this and I would focus on English across my website and wouldn't worry too much about translating my products, my landing pages, my content, unless these numbers started increasing or if I wanted to target these languages. Again, what you can do is take the time to navigate through all your different reports. What I recommend you do is jump over to "Report snapshot," then navigate over to the right-hand side and customize this report here. You want to add the key widgets that you want to measure from the right-hand side, like I showed you earlier. Then, once you've done that, you can navigate through your report snapshot and click on each of the different widgets that you want to analyze, for example, "View pages and screens," and that's going to take you to the particular report.
Now let's navigate over to the left-hand side and click on "Explore." This is where you can generate your own reports, or you can choose from these templates. For example, maybe you want to understand the segment overlap; what do intersections of your segments of users tell you about their behavior? Again, you can navigate back and create a blank custom report. Simply add the report name, then add the date range you want to measure, and then customize your report by adding segments, dimensions, and metrics. Simply click the plus icon, choose the segments, dimensions, and metrics. If you want to learn more about generating reports, what I'll do is add the appropriate tutorial down below in the description. However, as a beginner or intermediate user of Google Analytics, you will not use this feature. Then, below that, we have "Advertising." This is if you're running paid ads; you can then connect, analyze, and optimize your advertising campaigns directly inside Google Analytics.
Okay, let's navigate back home, and that is everything that I wanted to cover in this Google Analytics tutorial for beginners. In 2025, you should now be familiar with Google Analytics 4, how to understand and interpret data across the different reports that you can customize and generate inside Google Analytics. And there we have it, guys. That is it for this updated Google Analytics tutorial for 2025. Now, if you have any questions about the installation process or how to actually use Google Analytics, make sure to pop them down below. And with that said, thank you so much for watching this tutorial all the way through to the end. If you got value, make sure you leave a like and subscribe, and that way, I'll see you in the next video. Take care, everyone.