So you have a Google Analytics account for your website. Now, how do you know if visitors to your website are doing what you want them to do? Setting up Goals within your Google Analytics will help you prove that your digital marketing investments are paying off. These Goals provide you with insight on how to improve your efforts.
Jeff Rajeck, Senior Trainer at ClickAcademy Asia, shares some tips on how to set up different types of goals in Google Analytics.
Where can you set up Goals?
On the left menu column, go to Conversions - Goal - Overview
There will be no data at first as Google Analytics does not assume it knows what you want people to do. So here are examples of setting up goals for an ecommerce business, a B2B business and for publishers.
Ecommerce
Goal type: Destination Goal
Add a new goal and fill in the field with 'made a purchase' and fill out the template. It will automatically be set to a destination goal.
A destination goal means that every time a particular visitor comes to your site, and arrives at a particular destination, in this case, the thank you page after making a purchase, the goal would have counted.
B2B
Goal type: Custom Destination Goal
For B2B businesses, you would most likely want people to fill out a contact form. Similar to ecommerce, visitors would end up reaching a thank you page after submitting their information. However, you would need to select custom goal because there’s no actual template for it.
Publishers
Goal type: Pages Per Session OR Duration
For publishers, there is no particular page you want people to get to, but you want them to be on the site for a long time, enjoying all the articles and seeing a few ads as well.
For this, you can choose to set up a Pages Per Session or Duration goal. First select custom goal, then Pages/Screens per Session or Duration. You can then fill out the fields that accompany either selection.
Setting up goals will help you keep track of how many visitors to your site did what you wanted them to do. With that data, you’ll be able to analyse the channels people use to get to your site, the countries that they’re from, or other pages that they view before they reached your goal and optimise your website and digital marketing efforts.
Get hands-on guided training on Google Analytics at ClickAcademy Asia's Google Analytics Certification. The 2-day course covers topics from basic setup and configuration to advanced tracking features. Find out more here.