How to Define Your Goals in Google Analytics!

Although it was launched only 5 years ago, most of those involved in managing a website are by now familiar with the general use of Google Analytics as to monitor the performance of your online marketing strategy through your site. All those who have a blog or a website have learned how to use the report categories on the left hand side bar in Google Analytics. That’s how you can keep track of the number of visitors, time they spent on your site, landing page, demographics and many other useful data. Nevertheless, not that many appreciate the advantages of the Goals report in Google Analytics. That is mostly because it is not that straightforward in using it. Setting up Goals is a very good way to measure the success rate of your website. Especially for e-commerce businesses, this can be of great help. Here are the steps to setting up Goals and funnels in Google Analytics.

According to the Google Analytics official blog: ‘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 visitor.’ As to be able to set goals, understanding how to define funnels is very important. According to the same source: ‘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 page view of a specific page.’

1. Define your Goals Decide what you want to measure? (e.g: e-mail sign up, checkout confirmation page) Add Goal in Google Analytics based on what you want to measure. You can do that by clicking on Goals in the left hand menu, then click on the set up goals and funnels link to get started. Next click on the Add goal link on the left and fill in the following fields: Enter Goal Information and URL Destination. URL Destination refers to the page where you want to get your visitors to. It can be the page indicating the completed checkout process.

2. Goal Details

Add the Goal Value. The Goal value refers to the monetary return you estimate to get from a completed goal. Choose the Match Type. There are three options available as to set up your match type: head match, exact match and regular expression match. Choose the first option if your Goal page has variables in the URL that might change. E.g.:/checkout/?page=1&basket=12345, where the first part of the string URL will be matched. Choose Exact Match if your Goal page is a static URL and Regular Expression Match if your Goal page is actually a static URL that does not change.

3. Setting up Funnels Go to your website and map out the exact URL path of the process you would like to monitor as your Goals. This path is actually the funnel process.

4. Review your Goals After you have set your Goals and defined you Funnels, it is time to see where you find the results. You can see your Goal data straight from the Sites Overview page.

These are the main steps in setting up your Goals as well as define your Funnels. The report generated by your Goals can bring huge benefit to your understanding and monitoring of your site’s users.

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