If you haven’t set up goals for your business’ website in Google Analytics yet, you’re missing out on some important data insights! This guide will walk you through what goals are, different ways you can use them, and helpful resources on how to set them up in your Analytics account.
What it is: goals are a functionality in Google Analytics that allows you to measure your business' objectives on your website by setting up special tracking. When a user completes an goal, this is called a conversion.
Why goals are important: setting up goals gives you a clear business strategy with key Setting up goals can help your business reach important milestones.performance indicators. Goals allow you to see important user behavior like when someone completes an action on your site. Goals can also help you pinpoint successful areas on your site and areas where you may need to improve.
In Google Analytics, there are four elements you can track: URLs, Time, Pages/Visits, and Events. So what’s the difference between each of these and how can they help your business?
Setting up a URL destination goal is perfect for e-commerce sites when users make it to the confirmation page for their order. Each time someone goes to this URL, it triggers a goal completion.
Knowing how many people stay on a web page for a specific amount of time can be useful if you have videos or a blog that you want users to view. You can choose the exact time duration you want your goal to be. Make sure not to low ball this time duration though; making the goal too easy to trigger won’t provide you with insights you can improve your site with.
You can also track how many pages a user visits during their session. This tracking is useful for e-commerce sites that want to see how many product pages users visit and which pages they seem to drop off at.
Setting up events as goals requires a little more work than other goals. Event tracking is great for call-to-action buttons like subscribing to a newsletter, or filling out a contact form. You can set up events in Google Analytics as a custom event or with Google Tag Manager. Keep in mind you may not want to make every event on your website a goal. For example, you may want to track when someone adds an item to their cart as an event, and when someone clicks the “place order” button as a goal.
Setting up goals is the easy part, it’s deciding what your business’ objectives are and creating a strategy to reach them that’s hard. Before diving into goal tracking, sit down with your team to determine which pages or elements on your site are important enough to track as a goal. As a rule of thumb, a goal completion should help you generate income and improve your marketing strategy!
If you’re not sure where to start, we listed some handy resources you can use to get started with Google Analytics and goals!
How to Set Up Google Analytics in 5 Simple Steps
How to Set up Google Analytics Goals & 7 Tips to Get Ahead
What is the Difference Between Goals and Events in Google Analytics