Google Analytics is the most widely used web analytics and monitoring software. Since Universal Analytics was put into place, it has been possible to use any device that links to the internet to deliver information to Google Analytics via the “Measurement Protocol”. This encompasses point-of-sale equipment, cellular applications, and even coffee makers or refrigerators!
While Google Analytics naturally records site visits, sessions, and the rate of exits, it is essential to use customization to track the most essential metric – are customers interested in buying your product or service?
It is essential to define your organization’s objectives and marketing goals before considering what Google Analytics goals are and how they should be put into practice. This blog post won’t go into that, but you can download the below guide that will help you with planning your wider company objectives:
Understanding data & analytics
Google invests substantial time and effort into refining their Analytics terminology. Achievements on the website are achieved through actions taken by the user aiming to reach a desired outcome. Objectives can be found in the “Conversions” section of the menu on the left side.
Conversions
In the Conversions area, you will additionally find ‘Internet Business’, ‘Multi-Channel Funnels’ and ‘Attributed’. I won’t delve into these in too much detail as we’re focusing on goal tracking, but as a high-level overview:
- eCommerce – provides ecommerce tracking metrics such as product purchase information and transaction value.
- Multi-Channel Funnels – shows whether more than one channel (such as social media, PPC, direct traffic, etc.) contributed to a conversion.
- Attribution – compares different models in relation to how much a certain channel affected a conversion. Avinash Kaushik’s blog post is a highly informative read on this topic.
This post will be concentrating on the last area that remains unacknowledged in the context of conversions – Goals. Let’s examine the various types of objectives that exist.
What types of goals are available?
We should first draw a line between macro goals and micro goals. Macro conversions are typically associated with lead production or specific buying, like an online purchase or submitting data through a lead inquiry form. Micro goals refer to small steps that could potentially lead to a bigger outcome in the long run, such as signing up to a mailing list. Within Google Analytics however, there are five types of goals:
- Destination – triggered when someone lands on a specific web page. Most common examples include when a user completes a contact form and is redirected to a new page with the URL – www.mydomain.com/thank-you
- Duration – triggered when a user spends a certain amount of time on your website.
- Pages/Screens per session – occurs when a specific number of pages have been visited by a user.
- Event – a goal is recorded when a specific event occurs. Events could be a social share, a video play or a button click.
- Smart Goals – Smart Goals use machine learning to look at user behaviour on your site. GA then determines whether that user’s session is valuable and likely to lead to a conversion. In truth, if you’re reading this tutorial then you’re probably beyond Smart Goals, so I wouldn’t recommend implementing them.
These objectives are adequate for obtaining an excellent understanding of the conversion rates for your website. You can give objectives numerical values in order to get a clear picture of how effective your marketing endeavors have been on a financial level. This is hard to figure out without the right info, but here’s an illustration: Your website furnishes a service, with an average charge of $500. If you realize that out of every 50 people that your contact form has contacted, one of them turns into a customer, then the value of a form fill (your goal value in this instance) is $10. In order to make a profit, your marketing efforts will have to cost less than $10 for each 50 prospects.
Why is all this important?
Establishing objectives gets you nearer to comprehending genuine return on investment – something referred to as closed-loop analytics (as well called closed-loop advertising). This is where all four of the below points are tracked:
- A visitor arrives at your site due to marketing activities: referral, brand awareness, etc;
- That visitor then browses your site;
- They then become a lead through a web form or similar;
- That lead becomes a customer.
Without Google Analytics, the top two cannot be tracked. Without incorporating a system for tracking our goals, we cannot keep tabs on the third step. Stage four of the process necessitates connecting to a CRM system to gain an accurate comprehension of your return on investment. This is how aims serve as the connection between the website and the CRM system. To emphasize the point, you can also investigate the data in more detail, depending on the objectives you have established. You can use destination goals to establish a pathway that will allow you to analyze data in the Goal Flow and Funnel reports. This enables you to include stages individuals may be expected to go through prior to converting so that you can determine webpages that might have potential problems by examining more extensive metrics. Are individuals leaving the process at a particular stage in the funnel? It appears that there is an issue that should be addressed. You won’t have any understanding of what your website’s transformation rate is, why or at which point individuals leave before culminating, or which paths add to a transformation without objectives. This information is extremely useful for marketers aiming to increase the effectiveness of their website (also known as conversion rate improvement, or CRO).
Where to Find Google Analytics Goals
To start setting up your goals:
- Go to your Google Analytics standard reports
- Click on the “Admin” button in the top right
- Click on “Goals”
- From one of the Goal sets, click “+ Goal” (goal sets are just a way for you to easily group goals) to set up a new goal.
First name your goal. The name should be recognizable quickly when it appears in Google Analytics, so make certain it’s easily comprehended.
You can choose between “active” or “inactive” to choose whether the goal is enabled or disabled. If you’d like to no longer work on your goal, choose “inactive”. You won’t be able to erase it, but you can deactivate it. Google Analytics constantly takes into account goals while collecting the data necessary to create your reports. Google Analytics is unable to reverse its collection of past goals.
Now we have to make a choice. What type of goal do we want to build?
1. URL Destination Goals
URL destination goals keep track of specific URLs. Every time someone visits that web address, they initiate the desired outcome. These are great for showing gratitude, validating, and creating documents.
The URL that will cause a goal to be achieved is what is known as the Goal URL. Do not type in the entire web address, just use the part that follows the domain. If the entire web address is www.crazyegg.com/pricing, input “/pricing” into the field.
This will decide how precise Google Analytics needs to be when deciding if a URL should be included.
For exact match, only the specific URL will work. Nothing else. If the URL has a query string or a unique ID that identifies the session, then it will not be taken into account. Do not employ an exact match if your system continually formulates distinct URLs for each individual.
Also be careful with exact match on landing pages. If you attach UTM tags to your marketing strategies in order to monitor them, only visits not linked to a marketing campaign will be counted by Google Analytics.
The head match will take note of any visits to a particular URL regardless of what follows the address. If you utilize query parameters or session IDs a great deal, it is wise to select head match.
Regular expressions are for the analytics pros. Essentially, they allow you to specify your own web address in any way that you wish. The downside is that they’re super complicated. Check out Google’s comprehensive guide on regular expressions if you are looking to explore this topic deeply.
Check this option if the capitalization of letters in your web address leads to multiple webpages. Usually, you’ll want to leave this box unchecked.
To find out more about computing goal values and when to establish them, take a look at the post When to Use Google Analytics Goal Values on the blog.
2. Visit Duration Goals
This one’s pretty simple. This can be utilized to monitor the number of visitors who remain on your website for a given period. You can also make a target to observe every visit that lasts less than a certain period. This proves tremendously beneficial for help websites that are attempting to assist clients in finding an answer to their inquiry quickly.
Configuring the visit duration goal is super straightforward.
Determine whether you wish to set a target to be achieved on any duration of visit that is either longer or shorter than the limit you specify. You will use “greater than” to measure engagement and “less than” to measure how quickly your help site offers useful information.
Indicate the specific time you want to achieve the goal down to the hours, minutes, and seconds. Most sites use 5 minutes here. It doesn’t really matter what time you choose. For optimum data collection, aim to achieve an attainable time that not everyone can manage but some can. If too many people initiate the objective, it will not be feasible to determine how to enhance your page. If only a limited number of people meet the goal, the same outcome will occur.
The following blog post will provide an exhaustive breakdown of goal values.
3. Pages/Visit Goals
Pages per visit is a straightforward goal type to set up and is like goals set for time spent on a particular page. This goal follows the amount of pages each visitor visits before they exit instead of noting the time they spend on the website. Once again, it’s ideal for customer support sites.
You have three options to select from: “greater than,” “equal to,” or “less than.” If you want to measure engagement, then select “greater than” and, if you want to measure the success of your support site, pick “less than.”
Specify the amount of pages you would like this event to be working on.
4. Event Goals
Putting together events involves a more intricate process than other goals because it necessitates more planning. Once all of your events are organized and prepared, it’s a simple process to pick any of them as your target.
You must incorporate a small amount of JavaScript into the element that you are wanting to monitor, similar to how you would with virtual pageviews. This tells Google Analytics when an event has occurred. This guide will demonstrate precisely how to execute Google Analytics Event Tracking.
You can track just about anything you want with Google Analytics events such as:
- External links
- Downloads
- Time spent watching videos
- Social media buttons
- Widget usage
Any item that your guests come in contact with can be monitored through events.
For setting up an event, begin by defining it with a relevant category, action, label, and value. Choose which of your events should be counted as goals using the dropdown menus.
You have the choice to utilize as much or as little of them as you desire. The desired result will only be achieved if the event is precisely the same as all of the ones specified. If you merely stipulate the category, the aim will not take into account activities, markings, or amounts. The objective will only be triggered if the occurrence fulfills all four stipulations.
Choose whether to take either a new goal value or to utilize the event value as the goal value. In general, utilize the value of the event if it is closely related to making a profit. If not, use a new goal value that is. Or leave the goal value blank.
Make sure you look into the detailed information on goal values from the goal value post.
Bottom Line
Set up goals for tracking the essential metrics of your website by utilizing URLs, time spent on the website, number of pages/visits, and events. The more closely these measures align with activities that bring in money, the better.
