Working with and setting up Goals in Google Analytics

The use of Goals comes forward from the main motivator behind web analytics for most of us: Analyzing and optimizing how many people are doing what we want them to do and (perhaps more importantly) why others don’t.

In its simplest form, a Goal is a page marker that can be set in Google Analytics, which tells you the amount of times a certain page is reached and its most common use is recording product purchases or registration completions.  Without tracking Goals, trying to get more business in and out of your website would be like driving blind. There’d be no way of telling what performance is today, nor what it will be tomorrow so it’s impossible to know which of your online marketing efforts are paying off and which aren’t.

Choosing which Goals to set

Setting goals can be quite straightforward, as long as business objectives are clear and website performance can easily be put into that perspective. For a lot of businesses, the main objective will be to track purchases – quite straightforward and easy to implement. Most e-commerce websites run promotional offers frequently and for those businesses it’s interesting to note that goals can be defined to track purchases made resulting from a visit to a promo page, for example. This goal, if set up correctly, can be an excellent measure of the success of a promotional campaign.

In other instances, one can choose to set up the thank you page after a successful registration as a goal, which would apply to business websites collecting contact details for Sales follow up (leads). NGO websites could opt to track the amount of responses that were received for a petition or information request.
The uses of goals in basic form are straightforward, but with a little imagination, this tracking method can go a long way. It’s important to establish the organization’s own goals and (long-term) objectives in order to determine which analytics goals are to be tracked to give a measure of performance.

Setting up Goals in Google Analytics

1. There are a few steps and settings involved in setting up Goals, and although some of these steps will require thought and possibly consultation with others, none are rocket science.
2. The first step is getting to the Analytics Settings page (the first page after logon), after which you choose the website profile and select the Edit link
3. The second table, Conversion Goals and Funnel shows you the maximum 4 Goals available* per website profile, each of which can be set up by clicking the edit link
4. Active Goal – switch on or off tracking of this Goal
5. Select the Match Type** – Exact match, Head match or Regular Expression Match
6. Set the Goal URL – the page on your site which you want your visitors to reach. This could be a purchase confirmation page after a purchase transaction, or the thank you page after visitors submit their registration
7. Set the Goal Name – for example Purchase Complete or Registration
8. Define Funnel*** – For every Goal, there are certain paths your visitors follow through your site to make a purchase or to register for a newsletter, etc. A funnel is used to track a specific path that visitors follow to reach a Goal. In the set up form, provide each individual page URL that makes up your Goal funnel…
9. … and you’re done!

Notes

* Maximum number of Goals

Google Analytics offers only 4 Goals per website profile. Should you require more Goals (for example, if you’d like to track Goals for individual products) you could opt to track different parts of your site in separate website profiles.

** Match type options

• Exact match in case the Goal should be set for an exact matching URL
• Head match is used when your site generates pages dynamically but all pages use the same URL structure. If http://www.example.com/checkout.cgi?page=1&id=9982251614 is an example Goal URL, but the id tag differs per transaction, provide the value http://www.example.com/checkout.cgi?page=1 so that other parameters are ignored and the Goal is tracked properly
• Regular Expression Match is used when your site generates pages dynamically and the Goal page can have different URL structures. For example, these two URLs are checkout pages on your site:

http://sports.example.com/checkout.cgi?page=1&id=002
http://fishing.example.com/checkout.cgi?page=1&language=fr&id=119

Since both the subdomain as well as the URL parameters behind “page=1” are different but you want both URLs to be tracked by the same Goal, you should set Match Type = Regular Expression Match and set Goal URL to “page=1” (without quotation marks).

*** Funnels and goals

In the event that you’ve set out a specific path and would like to test whether your customers stick to that path or get “lost” along the way, you can set up one Goal with Funnel definitions and one without. This will allow you to see how many visitors use alternative routes and this can give you valuable pointers as to how you can keep your visitors in the ideal funnel ( optimizing conversion by preventing visitors from wandering off or losing track of their own objective – purchase, registration, etc.). Setting the Funnel definition can also give you insights into customer behaviour and how they interact with your pages. Whereas you thought clicking a specific link was obvious for anyone, this method can warn you when your visitors think otherwise, potentially resulting in loss of sales.