What is Google Analytics?
Analytics (known as GA4) is one of several services provided by Google, used for tracking activity on websites. Analytics is organized into accounts and properties to which you can be granted access in order to read and analyze the activity for your part of the SMU website. Tools are also built into WordPress software that let you view these same things for sites on blog.smu.edu and people.smu.edu.
To access the system, go to https://analytics.google.com. Follow prompts to login with your smu.edu email and SMU password. If you are using Chrome, this works best with a Chrome profile created specifically for your smu.edu email.
If you log in and either can't see anything or get a message forbidding you to log in, you need to first have your smu.edu account added to Google Workspace. The IT Help Desk and/or OIT Web Team will help with specific details on which account and properties you can gain access to.
Who may request an account?
View-level or editor-level access is available to all faculty and staff in the SMU community. To request access, contact the Help Desk at help@smu.edu (you may be referred to the OIT Web Team), specifying your smu.edu email address along with the email addresses of others needing the same access in your department, and the part of the website system to which you need analytics access.
Contractors, such as staff from marketing agencies, may also access analytics so long as the the marketing lead affiliated with the relevant school is making the request. The marketing lead must set up a sponsored SMU account for the contractor.
Schedule a consultation
Want to learn more about traffic to your website?
We offer analytics consultations for websites hosted on Sitecore, blog.smu.edu, and people.smu.edu. Learn more about which pages get the most traffic, how people are landing on your site, and get ideas for improving content, layout, and navigation.
After the consultation, you may request to have monthly reports emailed directly to your inbox. This will allow you to continue to track website performance over an extended amount of time
Help and tutorials
We recommend starting with the Google Analytics Quick Start course from LinkedIn Learning (SMU log in required) to learn Google Analytics. More advanced Google Analytics courses (SMU log in required) are also available at LinkedIn Learning.