- The Web Environment
- Determining Your Cross-Browser Goals
- Developing Your Site for Different Devices
- In Conclusion
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Determining Your Cross-Browser Goals
To determine how to handle different browser issues, you need to understand your visitors. To do that, you need to look at your site statistics.
Analyzing Your Site Traffic
One of the most popular methods for tracking site statistics is Google Analytics (GA), which collects information about site visitors’ behavior.
Setting Up Google Analytics
If you already have a Google account (like one for Gmail), use it to set up a Google Analytics account.
TO SET UP GOOGLE ANALYTICS, FOLLOW THESE 
STEPS:
If you already have a Google account, go to Google Analytics at http://www.google.com/analytics/ and click the Create an account button, and then enter your Email and Password and click the Sign In button.
Fill out the new account creation form with details about your account name, site URL, industry category, and time zone. Also, review the Terms of Service for the account.
At this main page of Google Analytics, you see a listing of the site you’ve entered. Click Tracking Code from the navigation menu.
Select the domain name you’re using. If you’re hosting your own domain name, select “A single domain.”
Copy and paste the code from Google’s form field in every page of your site above the closing body tag.
- Upload the new pages to the server.
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Once the code has been added to your site, the next step is to wait. It takes anywhere from four hours to a couple of days for Google to start publishing data to review.
Finding Browser Statistics
Finding browser statistics about your site’s visitors is pretty straightforward. You can find information such as the types of browser your visitors use, and how often they use each browser both in number and percentage. You can even find out these details for specific browser versions.
TO FIND BROWSER INFORMATION ON YOUR SITE’S VISITORS, JUST FOLLOW THESE STEPS:
- After logging into Google Analytics, you see the Visitors Overview page.
- Click on the large date text in the upper right corner to select the date range you want to review.
- In the left column, select Technology > Browser & OS.
- The different browsers are listed on the page and color-coded to a pie chart.
- For a breakdown on the different versions of a browser visiting a site, click on the browser name. The example shown here is the breakdown of the versions of Firefox visiting the site.
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Updating Google Analytics Settings
Going back to your profile to keep your site information and goals updated ensures that Google Analytics is gathering the right data to give you an accurate picture of your site usage.
TO UPDATE SITE INFORMATION AS IT CHANGES, FOLLOW THESE STEPS:
- Click on the Profile name.
- Select Profile Settings from the navigation submenu.
- Make updates to the information.
- Select Apply.
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