I’ve just experienced a problem with Google Analytics that I think a lot of people can learn from. Here’s are some important things to bear in mind:
- Google Analytics is free.
- Google really aren’t so interested in being responsive to Analytics users (understandably, if they were, imagine the potentially enormous workload they’d face)
- You’re on your own when it comes to customising your access
This is why, when setting up a Google Analytics account for a client website, you should avoid the path of least resistance in terms of setting that account up (which would be creating a site under your own account) and do the following:
- Create a NEW Google account, specific to this site.
- Note those details somewhere safe, you may need them later but they’re not what you’re going to use much after step 3
- Log in to Google Analytics with those account details, add admin users for your client’s normal Google login and your own.
Here’s why this is important:
1) The creator account for a GA site profile is permanent. You can’t switch the main admin role to someone else, you’re stuck with that account as the owner of the profile. That’s why I said create a Google account for the new site NOT the client.
2) In case that wasn’t clear enough: there’s no way to transfer a GA site profile to another user. No way whatsoever. Maybe if you have friends in the GA dept at Google, you might get your wish, otherwise, you’re stuck.
I learnt this lesson the hard and frustrating way: when someone sells a website you can’t ‘hand over’ their GA profile, the historical GA data is lost (and yes, before you GA cheerleaders get on my case, I know you can export reports, but that’s hardly the same as having the actual data there to query against when doing comparisons with historic data, now is it?). Don’t make the same mistake I did, start out with things in the right way and Google Analytics will serve you well.
Photo credit: John Linwood via Flickr
