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2. April 13, 2012
searchenginejournal.com
Glenn Gabe
A Beginner’s Guide to Conversion Goals in
Google Analytics
about conversion goals in Google Analytics, which
you can implement today. And after implementing
a rounded set of goals, you can start to quickly ana-
lyze sources of traffic to identify both high and low
performers. A rounded set of conversion goals can
go a long way. You can view performance across a
number of reports, and that data can provide enough
insight to make important changes. Changes that
can help you succeed.
Lesson 1: Which Actions can be Conversion
Goals?
When most people hear “conversion”, they think
T
here’s a reason that when companies call me revenue. I get it, revenue is absolutely important,
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/a-beginners-guide-to-conversion-goals-in-google-analytics/42558/
about SEO, Paid Search, or Social Advertising, and tracking macro-conversions like a sale is the
we always end up speaking about Analytics as most important thing you can do analytics-wise.
well. The reason is simple. If you don’t have a roun- That said, macro-conversions are not the only goals
ded analytics strategy, then you won’t have a solid you should be tracking. That won’t enable you to
understanding of how your campaigns perform. In see the full picture. Using an ecommerce site as
addition, if you don’t have the mechanisms in place an example, you might have several other success
to easily see how visitor segments perform, then events, including:
important questions could go unanswered. And
that’s not good for enhancing your business. • Email marketing subscriptions
• Contact form completions
Enter the Conversion Goal • Clicks to social accounts (like Facebook,
Concepts in Web Analytics can get confusing. You Twitter, Google+, and Pinterest)
have event tracking, conversion goals, success • Engagement goals like time on site or pages
events, multi-channel funnels, profiles, filters, di- per visit
mensions, regular expressions, etc. This is one of • Events like watching product videos
the reasons that too many companies slap a trac- • Downloads like product specs or product
king code on their websites and call it a day. The guides
problem is that an “out of the box” Google Analytics • Clicks to trigger live chat with your custo-
implementation will only get you so far. Sure, you’ll mer service reps
get the basics, but that won’t necessarily help you
glean insights that can boost ROI. So, beyond the macro-conversion of a sale, there
are several other goals that should be tracked. But
But I’m not here today to throw advanced concepts guess what? Most companies are not tracking those
at you. My goal (no pun intended) is to explain more additional goals. When they analyze their traffic
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3. April 13, 2012
searchenginejournal.com
A Beginner’s Guide to Conversion Goals in Google Analytics
sources and campaigns, they simply see revenue. 1. URL Destination
That’s unfortunate, because several of the other If a user visits a certain page on your website after
goals contribute to revenue. For example, email completing an action, then you can use that URL
marketing is the top driver of revenue for some as a conversion goal. The classic example is the
of my ecommerce clients. Any traffic source or purchase confirmation screen in an ecommerce
campaign that drives more email subscriptions is sale. It could also be the “thank you” screen after
darn valuable to my clients. If I didn’t analyze that someone submits a form.
conversion goal, then I could very easily discount
traffic sources that were actually driving revenue, 2. Visit Duration
but just not directly. That’s the danger of having a This is an engagement goal type that lets you trig-
limited analytics strategy in place. ger a conversion when a user stays on the site for a
certain period of time (or less than a certain period
Quick Tip: You can have up to 20 goals per profile of time).
in Google Analytics (4 goal sets, and 5 goals per set).
3. Pages Per Visit
Lesson 2: Conversion Goal Types Another engagement goal type that lets you trigger
When adding a conversion goal in Google Analytics, a conversion when a user visits a certain number
you can choose one of four goal types. I’ll quickly of pages. It can be set to greater than, equal to, or
cover those types below so you can start to think less than a number of pages, based on what you
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/a-beginners-guide-to-conversion-goals-in-google-analytics/42558/
about your own website, and how you will start to are trying to track.
track your own success events.
4. Event
This is one of my favorite aspects of Google Analytics
v5. Event tracking is a powerful way to identify
specific actions on your site. These actions could
include downloads, video views, clicks on specific
links, button clicks, etc. It’s an extremely versatile
piece of functionality that I use on a regular basis
when tracking actions on a site. And, Google Analy-
tics enables you to use events as conversion goals.
That’s awesome and opens up a world of opportunity
for tracking conversion.
Try it now: Right now, visit your website and jot
down all of the important actions visitors can per-
form. Then review the conversion goal types listed
above and slot those actions under each category
that fits. This will be the basis for your analytics
plan. You will implement these goals after reading
my post. :)
Lesson 3: How Can Conversion Goals Improve
Your Analysis?
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4. April 13, 2012
searchenginejournal.com
A Beginner’s Guide to Conversion Goals in Google Analytics
In its most basic form, you can view conversion
by traffic source by clicking the Goal Set Tabs at
the top of your reporting (see screenshot below).
You can see a top-level view of all traffic sources by
conversion goals, and then you can drill into each
source to view more granular details.
Although viewing conversion by traffic source is
incredibly valuable, it only scratches the surface
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/a-beginners-guide-to-conversion-goals-in-google-analytics/42558/
of what you can see once goals are set up. I’ve in-
For example, drilling into the Organic Search re- cluded a list below of some other reports you can
ports, you can view conversion by keyword, by lan- view conversion goals within. For example, mo-
ding page from organic search, by search engine, bile traffic, location, new vs. returning visitors, etc.
etc. If you drill into the referring sites report, you Check out the list below.
can view conversion by website and referring URL.
You can drill into campaign traffic to view conver- Beyond traffic sources and campaigns, here are
sion by ad content, keyword, or destination URL. some additional reports you can view conversion
You get the picture. This alone can provide huge within:
amounts of value. But that’s not all you can see…
• Location
• Language
• New vs. Returning Visitors
• Browser and OS
• Mobile Devices
• Landing Pages
• Site Search Usage
As you can see, once conversion goals are set up, you
can start to view conversion data across many re-
ports. Understanding how various visitor segments
are performing (across a rounded set of conversion
goals) can be extremely powerful. Compare this
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5. April 13, 2012
searchenginejournal.com
A Beginner’s Guide to Conversion Goals in Google Analytics
process to simply browsing site usage data and trying across visitor segments. And again, you can start
to determine what’s working for you… today. Don’t hesitate, gather your team, map out
your conversion goals, implement them quickly,
Ready to Move? and start gleaning insights. Stronger ROI awaits.
I hope you’re ready to hit Google Analytics and set
up some conversion goals. But before you do, I
wanted to provide a quick list of important points
to consider. Keep this list in mind while developing Written By:
your analytics strategy:
• Create a new profile when you are ready to
add conversion goals. This will enable you Glenn Gabe | G-Squared
to keep your original data as-is. There’s no Interactive | @GlennGabe
harm in adding more profiles for the web-
site at-hand. Glenn Gabe is a digital marketing
• Filter internal traffic for your new profile, consultant at G-Squared Interactive and focuses
so employee traffic doesn’t impact conver- heavily on SEO, SEM, Social Media Marketing, and
sion data. Web Analytics. Glenn has over 16 years of expe-
• Each conversion goal can only be trigge- rience and has held leadership positions in-house,
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/a-beginners-guide-to-conversion-goals-in-google-analytics/42558/
red once per user session. It makes sense, at a global interactive agency, and as a consultant.
since you don’t want one person to skew He has helped clients across a wide range of indus-
your conversion data by reaching a single tries including consumer goods, pharmaceuticals,
goal multiple times in a visit. If you need to healthcare, military, education, non-profits, online
know the exact count, then use event trac- auctions, real-estate, and publishing.
king.
• Add annotations to your reporting whene- More Posts By Glenn Gabe
ver you make changes. I can’t tell you how
many times those little notes helped me
while analyzing traffic. And that’s especial-
ly the case when you are comparing time
periods.
• Ensure you are tagging all campaigns
accurately (paid search, social advertising,
email marketing, etc.) This will enable you
to easily identify campaign traffic, versus
having that traffic get mixed into other buc-
kets. You can use URL builder to help you
tag campaign URL’s.
The Power of Goals
I hope this introduction to conversion goals ex-
plained the importance of developing a rounded
analytics strategy. By mapping out a number of
conversion goals, based on your own website and
business, you can easily view performance data
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