Disclosure: This is a simple but extensive guide. After have read this post you’ll be able to set up and manage your website more efficiently. Reserve yourself around 30 minutes to read and apply what I’m about to teach you here. Also make sure you have access to your website background (FTP/Cpanel, etc), or if you have no idea what it means, go ahead, read the post and if you still have doubts drop a comment.
Some of you know Jeff Richardson and I are running the Internet Marketing Academy’ seminars for some time now.
You can read all about it here www.internetmarketingacademy.com.au.
We cover website design (under business perspective) and optimisation, social media (twitter, Facebook, Youtube, blogs, etc), online advertising (like Google AdWords), and other online strategies like email marketing and online PR.
One of the big discussions we’ve got around the sessions is about ROI and Measure tools. One is scared of using the various tools available online that allow you to track more than visitors on your website.
Let’s talk about Goals
Goals (with a capital G) are a way to measure business objectives for your website in Google Analytics.
Goals must correspond to a measurable action performed by your website’s visitors, for example, a visit to a “contact us” page.
This combination of a business objective and a measurable action make up a Goal. Here are some common examples.
| Business Objective |
Visitor Action |
Success Measure webpage |
| Generate Leads |
Complete Contact Form | form_submitted.html |
| Relationship Marketing |
Sign up for Newsletter |
subscription_confirmed.html |
| Revenue Generation |
a Complete buying transaction |
thankyou.html |
| Raise Awareness | Whitepaper Download |
download_redirect.html |
To use a real world example, the Internet Marketing Academy objective is to get attendees, and the measurable action is a complete registration.
Keeping this goal in mind helps us focus on the objective and not worry about things that may don’t matter — like the number of visits and how many citations on Twitter (just example-in some cases this might be important). Goals serve this same purpose in Google Analytics.
Understanding the Goal Funnel
Usually the visitor action that’s associated with a goal involves multiple steps.
Together these steps make up the Goal Funnel, or the sequence of steps that lead up to the successful completion of a Goal.
Like the Goal itself, each of these steps must correspond to a measurable action, such as a pageview of a specific page.
Here’s a real world example.
Let’s assume we, from Internet Marketing Academy want to generate more registrations using a specific action.
The path for that play is as follows:
User comes to the home page, clicks on agenda page, after reading the agenda, the user decides to check on Price/Location and then convinced is a good deal, clicks on registration and complete the transaction.
In this example, the Goal is to complete a registration and the Goal Funnel is:
Home > Agenda> Price/Location>Thank You page.
The user moves from one page to another until either registration (Goal completed) or bounce out (Goal abandoned).
How to set up a Goal and Funnel:
Step 1) Define your Goal Funnel
Navigate to your website, and move through the steps required to complete your Goal.
As you navigate, note down the URLs for each page in the sequence. You will need it the url
If the sequence includes only one step (the Goal) than you don’t need to define a funnel at all. If the sequence includes events other than pageviews (such as clicks), you will need to use virtual pageviews or another method beyond the scope of this tutorial.
On our example:
- http://internetmarketingacademy.com.au/ (home page – step 1)
- http://internetmarketingacademy.com.au/internet-marketing-classes-agenda/ (agenda – step2)
- http://internetmarketingacademy.com.au/price-locations/ (price/location – step3)
- http://ima-melbourne-cbd1.eventbrite.com/ (registration – step4)
- http://ima-melbourne-cbd1.eventbrite.com/thank_you.html (thank you/completed – step 5)
Step 2) Configure Goal Settings for Each Profile
Log in to your Google Analytics account and then click “Edit” beside your profile.
You will need to configure goals for each profile you want them to show up in.
Go to Conversion Goals and Funnel and click “Edit”
Set “Active Goal” to “On”
Set “Match Type” to to either “Exact Match,” “Head Match,” or “Regular Expression Match.”
In our example, we chose “Exact Match,” because there is only one exact URL for our Goal page “thank_you.html.”
If you have multiple Goal pages, or multiple pages for one of the steps leading up to the goal, you might need to use a different match type.
If your Goal has a specific $$ value, be sure to enter it under “Goal Value”.
You may need to look at your financial data to determine how much a Goal completion is worth to you.
Step 3) Define Your Goal Funnel
Enter the URL and a meaningful name for each step in your funnel.
In our example the Goal URL is “/thank_you.html” and the name we gave it is “Conversion.”
If you only have one step (the Goal) than you don’t need to complete this section.
Step 4) Wait a Few Days and Analyze your Goal Performance
Your Goals will not work backwards, so you will need to wait for Goal data to appear in your reports.
Once you have data to analyze, navigate to the Goals section and open the Funnel Visualization Report.
Now we can analyze the entire goal funnel or just an individual page.
The report will show things like:
- Visits entering the funnel (at home page)
- Visits in which the person moved from one page to the next step in the funnel .
- Visits that completed the entire funnel and reached the Goal
Summary
So there you have it.
Goals and Funnels in Google Analytics let you see how well your website is living up to your business objectives.
They also help you identify specific areas of your website to improve on. Overall, they’re a crucial element in a successful web strategy.
- Before implementing Google Analytics Goals, identify what your business objectives are for your website, and what visitor actions they correspond to.
- Identify the steps visitors must go through to complete the desired action, and note down the specific pages that make up those steps.
- Use this information to configure Goals and Funnels.
- Take action on the data. Make simple design changes or try using Website Optimizer to make improvements.
- Work on your landing pages
Post inspired by Google
Best Regards
Lucio Ribeiro
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