How should you structure your Google Analytics account? We have all heard it a million times when it comes to AdWords accounts and ads – but Analytics? And why should you care? Because it could save you potential headaches and, the best part, makes implementations and debugging a walk in the park. Let me break down how Google Analytics Views should be set up.
Your Google Analytics account needs at least three (3) views. If you have less than three views, you are sadly doing it wrong.
Google Analytics Master View, a View made and tweaked for reporting. The Master View should exclude bots, the company IP address and much more. This is a View made for clean data to be used for reports. This is the View you would be using with your custom dashboards and analysing your visitors.
Google Analytics Test View, a View made for your experiments, implementations and debugging your code. I would set the Test View up to include only my own IP address and, exclude it on the Master View. Then I’ll have a playground before me, testing events, testing goals, testing reports and my home made code.
Google Analytics Unfiltered View, a View without (drumroll) filters. Don’t do anything with this View – ever. This is the RAW data View and it should collect as many hits and as many interactions as possible. If any filters go wrong, you’ll have the backup, this unfiltered View, to save the day.
If you’re managing a big website you’ll most probably have a couple of extra Views. Are you the International brand focused on a specific country? Set that country specific View up. The possibilities are, as usual with Google Analytics, pretty endless.
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