a) Goals:
Defining site goals and tracking goal conversions is one of the best ways to assess how well your site meets its business objectives. You should always try to define at least one goal for a website.
So what is a goal? A goal can be any activity on your website that’s important to the success of your business.
For example, an account signup is a goal. A request for a sales call is another example of a goal.
To define a goal in Google Analytics, you specify the page that visitors see once they have completed the activity.
For an account sign-up, you might set the “Thank You for signing up” page as a goal.
Each time that a visitor sees the page you defined as a goal, a conversion is recorded.
You can see total conversions and conversion rates for each of your goals in your reports.
b) Funnels:
For each goal that you define, you can also define a funnel. A funnel is the set of steps , or pages, that you expect visitors to visit on their way to complete the conversion.
A sales checkout process is a good example of a funnel. And the page where the visitor enters credit card information is an example of one of the funnel steps.
So, the goal page signals the end of the activity -- such as a “thank you” or “confirmation” page -- and the funnel steps are the pages that visitors encounter on their way to the goal.
c) Why defining funnels?
Defining a funnel is valuable because it allows you to see where visitors enter and exit the conversion process.
For example, if you notice that many of your visitors never go further than the “Enter shipping information” page, you might focus on redesigning that page so that it’s simpler.
Knowing which steps in the process lose would-be customers allows you to eliminate bottlenecks and create a more efficient conversion path.
d) Setting up goals:
To set up a goal, first go the Analytics Settings page and edit the the profile for which you want to configure a goal.
Once you are on the Profile Settings page, look for the “Conversion Goals and Funnel” section.
Select a goal and click Edit. You can create up to 4 goals for each profile.
e) Entering Goal Funnel Information:
Next, enter the URL of the goal page. You don’t have to enter the entire URL. You can simply enter the request URI - that’s what comes after the domain or hostname.
So, if the complete URL is www.googlestore.com/confirmation.php, you only need to enter /confirmation.php.
Make sure that the URL you enter corresponds to a page that the visitor will only see once they complete the conversion activity. So, pick something like the Thank You page or a confirmation page for your goal.
You can also enter a name for the Goal -- here we’ve entered “Completed Order”. This name will appear in your conversion reports.
Defining a funnel is optional. To define your funnel steps, you add the URLs of the pages leading up to the goal URL. Just as with goals, you don’t have to enter the entire URL of a funnel step -- just the request URI is fine.
Provide a name for each step in the funnel -- here we’ve entered “Select gift card “ for Step 1. The names you enter will appear in your reports.
Next, we’ll talk about the Match Type setting.
f) Goal URL Match Types:
The match type defines how Google Analytics identifies a goal or funnel step. You have three choices for the Match Type option.
“Head Match” is the default. It indicates that the URL of the page visited must match what you enter for the Goal URL, but if there is any additional data at the end of their URL then the goal will still be counted. For example, some websites append a product ID or a visitor ID or some other parameter to the end of the URL. Head Match will ignore these.
Here’s another example, illustrated on the screen shot: If you want every page in a subdirectory to be counted as a goal, then you could enter the subdirectory as the goal and select Head Match.
“Exact Match” means that the URL of the page visited must exactly match what you enter for the Goal URL. In contrast to Head Match, which can be used to match every page in a subdirectory, Exact Match can only be used to match one single page. Also notice that Exact Match does not match the second pageview, “/offer1/signup.html?query=hats” because of the extra query parameter at the end.
“Regular Expression Match” gives you the most flexibility. For example, if you want to count any sign-up page as a goal, and sign-up pages can occur in various subdirectories, you can create a regular expression that will match any sign-up page in any subdirectory. Regular Expressions will be covered in a later module.
When you use Regular Expression Match, the value you enter as the goal URL as well as each of the funnel steps will be read as a Regular Expression.
Remember that regardless of which option you choose, Google Analytics is only matching Request URIs. In other words, the domain name is ignored.
g) Case sensitive settings:
Check “Case Sensitive” if you want the URLs you entered into your goal and funnel to exactly match the capitalization of visited URLs.
h) Goal Value:
The “Goal Value” field allows you to specify a monetary value for goal. You should only do this for non-ecommerce goals.
By setting a goal value, you make it possible for Google Analytics to calculate metrics like average per-visit-value and ROI. These metrics will help you measure the monetary value of a non-ecommerce site.
Just think about how much each goal conversion is worth to your business. So, for example, if your sales team can close sales on 10% of the people who request to be contacted via your site, and your average transaction is $500, you might assign $50 or 10% of $500 to your "Contact Me" goal.
Again, to avoid inflating revenue results, you should only provide values for non-ecommerce goals.
i) Goal Conversions Vs. Transactions:
There is an important difference between goal conversions and e-commerce transactions.
A goal conversion can only happen once during a visit, but an e-commerce transaction can occur multiple times during a visit.
Let’s say that you set one of your goals to be a PDF download and you define it such that any PDF download is a valid goal conversion. And let’s say that the goal is worth $5.
In this case, if a visitor comes to your site and downloads 5 PDF files during a single session, you’ll only get one conversion worth $5. However, if you were to track each of these downloads as a $5 e-commerce transaction, you would see 5 transactions and $25 in e-commerce revenue.
You’ll learn how to set up ecommerce tracking and how to track PDF downloads in later modules.
j) Profiles and Goals Tracking:
You can have up to 4 goals for each profile. If you want to track additional goals, just set up duplicate profiles.
K) Filters and Goal Tracking:
If you are using a filter that manipulates the Request URI, make sure that your goal is defined so that it reflects the changed Request URI field.
For example, in the screen shot, we have a profile that defines /thankyou.html as a goal. But we have another profile with a filter that appends the hostname to the Request URI.
So, for this profile, we need to change the goal definition accordingly.
l) Funnel Reporting:
If you define a funnel for a goal, Google Analytics populates the Funnel Visualization report, shown here in the screen shot.
On the left, you can see how visitors enter your funnel. On the right, you can see where they leave the funnel and where they go.
The middle shows you how visitors progress through the funnel -- how many of them continue on to each step.
In this example, we can see that there were 9,283 entrances at the top of the funnel and 187 completed orders, at the bottom of the funnel.
This report is very useful for identifying the pages from which visitors abandon your conversion funnel.
j)Reverse Goal Path Reporting:
Here’s another report in the Goals section. It’s the Reverse Goal Path report. You can see this data even if you haven’t defined a funnel. It lists the navigation paths that visitors took to arrive at a goal page and shows you the number of conversions that resulted from each path.
In this example, we can see that 96 of the conversions -- or about 15% of them -- resulted from the first navigation path that’s shown.
This is a great report for identifying funnels that you hadn’t considered before and it can give you great ideas for designing a more effective site.
Funnel Visualization:
a) Funnel Visualization Report:
If you define a funnel for a goal, Google Analytics populates the Funnel Visualization report, shown here in the screeb shot.
On the left, you can see how visitors enter your funnel. On the right, you can see where they leave the funnel and where they go. The middle shows you how visitors progress through the funnel, how many of them continue on to each step.
In this example, we can see that there were 9,283 entrances at the top of the funnel and 187 completed orders at the bottom of the funnel.
This report is very useful for identifying the pages from which visitors abandon your conversion funnel.
b) Finding the Report and Selecting the Goal:
To find the Funnel Visualization report, look in the Goals section.
Once you are in the report, you can select the goal you want to analyze from the Select Goal drop-down menu.
c) Funnel Entrance Pages:
The boxes along the left side of the funnel show the pages from which visitors entered the funnel.
(entrance) shows the number of times that the funnel page was a landing page.
In this example, 11,514 visitors came to the View Product Categories page from the home page.
d) Funnel Exit Pages:
The boxes on the right show where visitors went when they abandoned the funnel.
For each step, you can see the pages that visitors went to.
(exit) means that the person not only abandoned the funnel but also left your site.
In this example, there were 1,423 funnel exits from the View Product Categories page that went to the software.asp page.
e) Progressing through the Funnel:
In this example, only 29% of visits to the View Shopping Cart page actually proceeded to the login page.
The remaining 2,418 times, the person either left the funnel for another page or left the site entirely.
This data is valuable because you can use it to see what pages of your site may need to be altered.
For instance, in this example, you might want to improve the design of the the “View Shopping Cart” page so that more visitors log in and continue.
You can also see that only 41% of visits to the Login page continue on to the Place Order page. So, the Login page may also need improvements.
- From Google Analytics IQ lessons.
