To navigate to the URL builder in the Help
Center click the link at the end of this lesson and scroll down to the URL builder form. In
the first step, type in the URL of the landing page (or where you want your ad or campaign link
to take users). Then fill out fields for the Campaign Source and Campaign Medium. Optionally,
you can fill out the fields for Campaign Term and Campaign Content. You'll also need to fill out the Campaign Name. Term, content, and name can be any values you want, just make sure that they’re descriptive enough to recognize when they
appear in your Google Analytics reports. A quick note about naming conventions. Typically,
you’ll use single words to name your tags. If you use phrases, then the URL builder will
add underscores between the words to avoid spaces in the URL. Be sure to use consistent
spelling and capitalization when entering tag values. Since Google Analytics is case
sensitive, a campaign named “PROMO1” in all uppercase will show up separately from
a campaign named “promo1” in all lowercase. Also, make sure that you use consistent medium
names like “display” for banner ads and “email” for email campaigns. When you
click “Generate URL” at the bottom, you can see that the URL Builder generates the
link with all the correct campaign parameters attached. This provides an easy way to quickly
generate campaign tags for tracking. But keep in mind, you can only use it to build out
one URL at a time, so you probably won’t want to use it to build each URL if you have
a large campaign. Instead, you can use a spreadsheet to simplify the process. We’ve provided
an example template at the end of this lesson that you can use to manage your campaign values
for bulk URL-building. Before launching a campaign with this link, you’ll want to
verify that your tracking tags are working correctly. Sometimes a website configuration
can break Google Analytics Campaign tracking. Here's a simple way to test your campaign
before you launch it. Open an incognito window or private browsing session. Then,
copy and paste the link you created to track your campaign into the address bar of the
browser. Once your website loads, navigate around your site and complete some of the
critical actions. For example, if one of your website objectives is a trial signup, complete
the signup process on your site. Or, if your campaign contains a coupon, try submitting
a transaction with the coupon applied. It's a good idea to try this with each URL you
created. You can instantly see campaign information in the Real Time reports or wait a few hours
to review the data in your standard Campaign reports. Then visit the “All Campaigns”
report in the “Acquisition” section under “Campaigns.” This report lets you compare
incoming traffic from your various marketing campaigns. To verify that the campaign is
collecting data properly, type the name of the campaign into the filter. You should see
an overview of the campaign clicks that you tested. If you click on the campaign name,
you can see the source and medium data that you entered into the URL Builder. If you want
to verify the other campaign tags you added to your URL, add a secondary dimension such
as “Ad Content.” This lets you view the primary dimension of “Source/Medium” broken
down by the “content” tag you added to your links. The Google Store differentiated
the “content” tag for their email newsletters by whether they were offering promotions or
not. By adding the secondary dimension of “Ad Content,” we can see which promotions
were most effective at driving people to the website. There are many other ways to analyze
campaign data, which we’ll cover in an advanced course. Using the URL Builder in conjunction
with Google Analytics reporting, you can quickly understand which campaigns drove the highest
quality traffic to your site.
