Goals are important to your business. Setting goals in Google Analytics can make a big difference in your business.
We have talked about various reports and how you can use them to uncover important traffic data. If you missed it, you can find the post at How to Run Date Range Reports in Google Analytics.
You Can Do More!
But you can learn and do so much more with analytics. Another way Google Analytics helps small business owners by allowing you to create, track, and accomplish specific goals. There are certain things you are trying to achieve with your online business.
There are certain things you are trying to achieve with your online business, and creating trackable goals is a simple way to monitor your progress.
A goal in Google Analytics represents a completed action that leads to a business objective.
Some Examples:
- Getting someone to subscribe to your email list. Making a sale
- Making a sale. Basically, goals allow you to measure how frequently you get your
- Going to another page.Basically, goals allow you to measure how frequently you get your
- Clicking on a link.
All of these could be goals.
Why are Goals Important?
Basically, goals allow you to measure how frequently you get your web visitors to take specific actions.
It makes your business and marketing efforts specific and measurable. You can hope your website is productive, or you can break down your business goals into individual and trackable events.
Instead of simply knowing how many people are going to your site, you can guide that traffic toward whatever actions you desire.
Without clearly defined goals, you cannot honestly evaluate the effectiveness of any particular marketing efforts.
How to Setup Your Goals in Google Analytics
- Sign into Google Analytics.
- Click the Admin tab at the top center of the page.
- Select the property you want to set a goal for.
- Choose Goals under the right-hand View column.
- Choose New Goal.
You will be given a list of choices, these are possible objectives you want a web visitor to accomplish.
There are pre-formatted templates, or you can create a custom goal.
NOTE: The goal templates provided usually cover any type of goal you would like to set up. Setting up a custom Goal is seldom needed and we are not going to cover it.
6. Your goal template choices fall under 4 categories:
*Revenue
*Acquisition
*Inquiry
*Engagement
7. There are subcategories to choose from.
8. When you select a goal you will be asked to name it.
9. You then need to choose a Goal Set and ID.
GA allows you to set up to 4 different sets of goals, with 5 separate goals in each set.
10. Choose your goal type. In Google Analytics you can monitor your goals 4 different ways:
*Destination (example – thank you page)
*Duration (example – 3 minutes or longer)
*Pages or Screens per Session (example – 4 pages)
*Event (example – watched a video)
11. Click the Next Step button. This takes you to your Goal
Description menu.
If you chose a Destination goal you will enter the web page URL that
signifies that person has accomplished the goal you intended. This would be the destination
that shows your visitor accomplished a specific goal.
If your goal was to have someone sign up for your newsletter and they did, you would
probably send them to a Thank You page. If you are aiming for Engagement, perhaps to
watch a video, your goal may be for that person to view the video for at least 3 minutes. Set
your goal details parameters and click the Save button.
12. When you hit Save you will be taken back to your Admin screen. To view your goals, choose the Reporting tab from the top of any GA page. Navigate to Conversions, Goals, and then Overview in the left navigation column to monitor your goal progress.
Congratulations, you have set up your first goal in Google Analytics.
Now, begin to use your web page to reach your goals.
