Google Analytics is by far my favorite free tool for small businesses online. You can learn SO much about your business just by adding just a wee bit of tracking code to your site.

However, unless you correct these three things with your Google Analytics account, you might be in for a little analytics trouble down the road.

Don’t worry – they’re easy to fix. Let’s walk through it:

(Don’t have GA set up yet? Check out my beginner’s tutorial for setting up Google Analytics for an easy step-by-step)

1 – No Second Admin User

Are you the only admin user for your Google Analytics account? Even if you’re the only person in your business, I strongly recommend linking another (backup) gmail address to your account. This gives you a backup plan if, for whatever reason, you lose access to your Analytics email account or your login fails. (Try googling “can’t access google analytics” to see how many people have had this dreaded problem)

Having a second admin user (even if it’s just a second email address you own) means you’ll still have access to your data if your primary login fails.

How do you add a second admin user?

1 – Once logged in, head to Admin
2 – Select the Users menu under Profiles
3 – Click +New User
4 – Enter the email address and be sure to select Administrator for Role
5 – Click Create User

And you’re done! This person can now log in to www.google.com/analytics with their email and password and see your account just like you can.

2 – Not Filtering Internal Traffic

Ever have a lot of code work done on your website then wonder why you got such a big spike in traffic in Google Analytics? For a lot of small business owners (especially ones with new-to-low traffic sites), you and your team are one of the biggest sources of traffic to your site.

But who cares what you and your team are doing on your site? We want to use Google Analytics to measure the behavior of potential customers.

How? By adding a simple IP address filter.

Don’t worry if you don’t know what an IP address even IS – just have you and your team visit www.whatismyip.com from their work locations (not via mobile) and send you the number they get. Easy peasy.

To set up that filter?

1 – Once logged in, head to Admin
2 – Select the Filters tab under Profiles
3 – Click +New Filter
4 – Name the filter – something like “Joe (web design) IP address” works.
5 – Under Predefined Filter, select Exclude and Traffic From the IP Addresses and That Are Equal To
6 – Enter the appropriate IP address
7 – Click Save

Done and done. Make sure to add more than one IP filter for yourself if you do a lot of work from home or a second location in addition to an office.

Without these filters, it’s easy to get an inaccurate picture of what’s going on with your website visitors. With these filters in place, you’ll get to make better decisions based on more honest data.

3 – No Privacy Policy

Did you know that as part of setting up Google Analytics on your site, you agreed to disclose certain information in your online privacy policy on your website? It’s true – check out the terms and conditions.

To quote Google,

“You will also use reasonable endeavours to bring to the attention of website users a statement which in all material respects is as follows:

‘This website uses Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc. (“Google”). Google Analytics uses “cookies”, which are text files placed on your computer, to help the website analyze how users use the site. The information generated by the cookie about your use of the website (including your IP address) will be transmitted to and stored by Google on servers in the United States. Google will use this information for the purpose of evaluating…’”

That’s not all of it – go check out the ToS to see it all!

Google reserves the right to review your site at any time to ensure you are in compliance – and, in theory, could revoke access to your account. So go ahead and make sure your privacy policy is up-to-snuff right now!

DISCLAIMER: This is by no means legal advice and you should absolutely consult with your own legal counsel to ensure compliance with laws (privacy and otherwise) in your area.

Your Turn

What about you? Have you come across any other easy-to-make mistakes with Google Analytics? Were you making any of the ones in this post? Did you find this useful? Let us know in the comments!

{Featured image via Semiologic}