Correctly configure Google Analytics Goals And Funnels. Set up Goals in GA and choose your goal type. Goal types can be Destination, Duration, Pages/Screens, and Events. Know what each goal types are and how to set them? Goals track the action of visitors on your website that allows measuring your KPIs. Track the goals you have set and view them. Goals are restricted to 20 per reporting view. To track more than 20 goals add another view for that property. When the user performs the defined action that you set as a goal, analytics records it as a conversion. Goal funnels are the users’ journey through a series of webpages before goal completion. A funnel is combined with a goal and determines how users enter and exit your website. In GA there are 3 types of funnels. They are Goal funnel, Sales funnel, and Multi-channel goals or sales funnel.
Contents
Google Analytics Goals And Funnels: Goals
Goals are the actions and events on the websites and are listed under four types of goal measurements
Read more about Google Analytics by clicking on 7 Steps To Getting Started With Google Analytics
Destination Goals
URL Destination Goals
URL Destination goals keep track of specific URLs when a user visits the specified URLs, that triggers the goal eg- in a website, if you have a page URL [www.websitename.com/thank-you] and some user happens to land on this thank you page by any means than GA will treat this goal as accomplished. Other types of URL destination goals are download an ebook or a white paper or a report, sales page, confirmation page. The thank-you page tracking numbers will allow you to know how many purchases have been made. Ensure that such URLs are hidden and access to such pages is through a sales funnel path for a ‘Buy’ which will allow accurate tracking.
URL Match
Equals to – for tracking one specific URL
Begins with – for tracking pages you want to track for specific campaign performances no matter what comes after the URL allowing the user to land on the specific web page
Regular Expressions – for advanced analytics define the URL or UTM parameters or matching URLs with different subdomains. Read more by clicking on Regex Basics.
Set up google analytics destination goal
fig2-In the GA Standard Reports click on the Admin Grid Button in the right-side navigation bar.
fig3-Under create view+ click on “Goals” in the submenu
fig4-In create+ view, click on the red new goal tab.
fig5-After clicking on new goals the Goal set up view page will be as shown. Select any from the preset goal template or set up the [custom] goal, scroll down, and click continue to proceed.
fig6-Name your goal and pick one of four possible types of Goal measurement and click on continue.
fig7- shows the Goal details view in the “equal to” tab write the URL as /thank-you/ [For the URL that looks like www.yourwebsite.com/thank-you/, only enter “/thank-you/”.]
eg- If the user is subscribed to a mailing list then the destination goal should be used and in this case enter “/mailing-list/“.
Toggle value tab to ON to assign a monetary value.
Toggle the funnel tab to ON if you expect users to your website to follow a certain path and define the URLs of that path and click on save.
The verify goal allows you to view the conversion based on the past 7 days.
Next click on save and you have set up a destination goal in google analytics.
Duration Goals
Duration goals refer to how long the average user spends on a website. Any increase is a sign of a good quality website and vice-versa for decreases. When you set a Duration Goal, use Segmentation to allow for track duration data of user engagement with time spent in different areas of your website.
Set up google analytics duration goal
Follow the above steps. To set up a duration goal refer to fig6 and checkbox for type- Duration and click Continue to get the Goal details ‘View’.
fig8- In the Goal Details View set the duration to greater than [say] 5 minutes and have a monetary value set to it if required. The verify goal allows you to view the conversion based on the past 7 days. When you are done click Save.
Pages/ Screens per session goals
Tracking users on the basis of time spent on the different pages of a website before exit. This goal is similar to the Duration goal setting and is a result of user engagement with multiple pages of your website.
Set up google analytics pages/ screens per session goal
Follow the above steps. To set up a duration goal refer to fig6 and checkbox for type- pages/ screens per session and click Continue to get the Goal details view.
fig9- Is the Goal Details View set to Pages/screens per session as the goal type, next click continue. Then set the number of pages per visit to [say 3] and have a monetary value assigned to it. The verify goal allows you to view the conversion based on the past 7 days. When you are done click Save.
Events
Events are user interactions on the website with the elements for a button click, download, or view a video. Certain actions such as Flash or AJAX elements etc cannot be tracked by GA which is independent of page loads and needs to be tracked as Events. Event Type can be – Forms | RSS subscription | User Registration | Affiliate links | Downloads | Ratings | Comments | and more…..
To learn more go to http://https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033068?hl=en.
Event goals can get complicated involving the addition of js code snippets in the header of your web page and then verifying by going to Behaviour > Events > Overview in google analytics to track events that will get recorded there.
Set up a google analytics event goals.
Suppose we have an event that tracks visitors watching videos embedded in our blog post.
Login to Google Analytics and click on Admin in the sidebar navigation.
refer fig2 & 3- Click > Under View list > click on Goals
refer fig4– Click > New Goal > Custom > click continue.
Name the goal say “Watching a Video” > for type- select Event > click continue
fig10- Enter goal details:-
Category [ Video ]
Action [ Play ]
Label [ Blog Post Video ]
Value [ Value ]
Click > Next
In the event of watching a video, If the goal category is set to “Video” and Label to “Blog Post Video” google analytics will count all videos watched in a blog post as a goal.
In the same way, you can set up a ‘contact form submission’ fig11 under the goal type ‘Event’. Under Goal details set up one or more conditions as under:
Category [Contact Form]
Action [Submit]
Label [Contact Form Page]
Value [Value]
View all the 4 goal types that you have set in fig12 > | Pages/Screens per session | Event | Duration | Destination. Conversions are recorded under the conversion column in the goal report. Deactivate any goal type by setting the toggle tab to OFF under the recording column.
Google Analytics Goals And Funnels: Funnels
Google Analytics Funnels are useful and essential for improving user experience and engagement. Losing a customer will reveal how your website can be improved to make more sales. A website owner can see the page they need to tweak to get to the next level. eg – Is too much of visitor details being requested by the page? OR Is the CTA powerful? It allows a comparison of funnels for different time periods to measure whether the tweaks made have a positive effect.
Google Analytics funnel is a navigation route consisting of a series of a webpage made up of a goal page + funnel pages whereby the user is directed to follow the funnel steps so that a website goal is accomplished.
In Google Analytics a goal has to be set up first so that a funnel can be created later. Set up to 20 pages as funnel pages.
First, enter the destination web page URL. Then assign a monetary value for this goal with the intention of determining page value.
This page gives an option to create a funnel. fig14 shows the creation of a 2-page GA funnel.
Click the Required option to the right to see traffic originating from the home page. If left unchecked you will see all the traffic from other sources that arrive at the website.
In the case of an e-commerce website after a sale is completed the customer will be sent to a confirmation page, the destination goal is used. A much longer funnel for a “buy” involves user’s personal info, the address for billing, options for shipping and a final review of the order.
Click on Save to complete setting of your goal and funnel. GA allows you to create 20 goals.
Segment
A segment can be set up to track purchases if you are using e-commerce eg- higher and lower revenue products to get started with some insights under “Overview” immediately.
Another use of segment would be to find out the traffic your websites receives from Twitter or Facebook and further configuration of multiple dimensions and metrics in one segment. The possibilities are exhaustive.
Segment page views by the dimensions for the device used, country of the user and the source from which the user comes such as Google or Linkedin.
After setting up goals and funnels, allow for a 24 hour time-lapse to enable GA to start collecting data. Navigate to Conversions and Goals to find 2-options
Funnel Visualization
Funnel Visualization in Google Analytics is the funnel graphic wherein the top represents the percentage of people continuing to the next step and the bottom gives you the final conversion rate.
Goal Flow
Google Analytics Goal Flow is a new feature that shows the same data in addition to loopbacks in order of funnel steps and historical data. Advanced segmentation for Why certain customers are being put off? can be set.
