Like Google Analytics, there are many metrics available today. They all track platforms.

But the problem is there are too many metrics. This will make it difficult for anyone to use all of them at a time.

This is where Goals play a key role.

They determine the purpose of your website and convert visitors’ time on the site into quantifiable actions. This will make your task of tracking your website’s performance easy and understand how your site is performing.

GOOGLE ANALYTICS GOALS

Google Analytics Goals refers to goals that track and report how many times visitors to your website take certain actions on the site.

The actions can be

• Making a purchase; OR
• Filling a form and submitting it; OR
• Subscribing to email or RSS or webinar or newsletter; OR
• Connecting with customer-service or sales or marketing departments; and more.

Aside from the above, browsing the website and spending time on a web page is also considered an action.

All of the above actions represent a visitor’s steps towards becoming a customer. They move the prospect closer to becoming a customer. What the prospect does counts for a lot. Some may have a lot of influence. So if such prospects are encouraged to take a positive action, it can influence others to take similar action.

TYPES OF GOOGLE ANALYTICS GOALS

Many goals can be created with Google Analytics. But there are some goals that carry a lot more significance and offer more value.

They include:

DESTINATION

It refers to a goal that allows you to set a specific page as a goal that’s later displayed in Analytics as a conversion.

A Destination Goal tracks the landing of a visitor on a specific web page or a specific URL while browsing your website. The moment the visitor lands on the web page, its work process is over.

You can use it to

• Learn how many visitors landed on a specific web page. The web page can be anything from a Order Confirmation Page to Add-to Cart Page, OR any page that facilitates conversion.
• Track visits to fixed URLs or directories or dynamically-generated pages.
• Match types like ‘Begins With’, ‘Equal to’, and such likes to trigger notifications.

You can have as many destination goals as you want on your website. Every time a visitor to your website visits any web page, it’s counted for the destination goal.

Destination goals are predominantly used for tracking actions like form submissions and such likes that transports the visitor to a thank-you page. Although it is not possible to track form data, just counting the number of visits made to the thank-you page will help you track those conversions.

A good example is that of a festival sale you’re holding at your store. A Google Analytics Destination Goal will help you to track the number of times a site user dissected pages from the /festivawear/directory.

Another example is tracking of the number of times; a user used the ‘Thanks For Buying’ web page. This will give you an indication of the number of sales successfully completed.

DURATION

It refers to a goal that tracks how much time a visitor to your website spends on a web page. In other words, it allows you to track how many visitors stay on your website for a certain amount of time.

A duration goal is completed when the visitor actively engages with your website This is unlike traffic data which covers all type of visits, including those that last a few seconds.

Duration goals

• Create a conversion based on the amount of time a visitor spends time on your website. This way it helps to track user engagement on your website.
• Are suitable for websites that are focused on branding or educational content or video content. They help to track visitors who browse your website pages, or read your web pages content to learn about your business and what it does.

PAGES / SCREENS PER SESSION

It refers to a goal that tracks engaged website visitors.  Conversions are counted based on the number of web pages a site visitor views rather than how much time a site visitor spends on the website.

Page views per session

• Tracks the number of pages a site visitor navigates your website before leaving it.
• Tells you which sections of your website needs to be improved. This will give you an indication whether your design or redesign has been a success or a failure.
• Measures the effect of a website refresh, that is, whether it’s positive or negative. And also site engagement.
• Is calculated as follows – number of pages views / total number of user session.

This type of goal is useful for ascertaining the number of website clicks or for gaining revenue from ad displays. The more the pages-per session are, the more it means more site visitors are engaging with it.

EVENT

Considered to be the most flexible among the many Google Analytics goals, Event Goals refer to goals that are based on certain user-interactions. That is user-interactions that have been already set-up as ‘Events’ on your website.

By setting-up a Google Analytics Event, you

• Track user-interactions that Google Analytics generally does not record. They can be any action beneficial for your website. Like downloading a part of content or engaging with interactive elements or submission of forms or link clicks or watching a video. However, some interactions cannot be tracked by default; like button clicks or clicks on outbound links or downloads of PDFs or form conversions with no ‘thank-you’ page.
• Get insights that are useful for your business. This depends on the kind of user-interaction on your website.

An event goal is said to be over when the particular action has been completed.

Event goals can also be combined with other goals. Like when site visitors complete certain duration goals, they can be given mailing list sign-up offers or special pop-up discount coupons.

how to SET-UP google analytics goal?

Before setting-up Goals, be clear about what kinds of actions you want your site visitors to execute. Once you are clear on that, you will get a clear idea on what kind of Goals you want to set.

Here is an easy step-by-step guide to setting up Google Analytics Goals.

• Go to Google Analytics.
• Sign-in your identity details.
• Click Admin. Then navigate to the specific VIEW.
• Click Goals in the VIEW column.
• Select Custom. Then click NEXT.
• Select Goal Type. Then click NEXT.
• Allocate a monetary Goal Value. This is optional BUT better recommended to be used.

Before setting-up Goals, it would do good to look at the goal templates in Google Analytics. They show-up whenever you create a new Goal. Each such Goal is tailored to a specific industry and business model. This will give you an idea which Goals would be suitable for your kind of business.

In case, no templates can be found on the Goal creation page, then

• Edit your settings with Analytics.
• Select an industry category. Your choice will tell Analytics which templates to use for your website.

NOTE:

• If you don’t select, they won’t show any at all.
• If there are Goals already set-up on your website, they can be seen in GOALS – VIEW column. Additionally, you can also set-up and configure any new goals that you would like to add.

 Over the next several weeks later, do repeated tests. This will ensure that the data is being compiled properly.

Make sure to organize your Goals by Goal Name, Goal Type, Goal Slot ID, and Goal Set. This will help keep your Goals and objectives well-organized, and track them as well.

CONCLUSION

With Google Analytics, you can create any number of goals. You can create a goal for any kind of action a visitor takes on your website.

But most of them in hindsight actually are not useful. Instead, it would make sense to create and set-up only those Goals that fuel customer conversions valuable to your business.