We can use goals to set benchmarks and to better understand how our users move through our website. I recently wrote a post about a particular goal we set up on an ecommerce site to track checkout conversions. The screen shot below is a funnel view of that particular goal.
A funnel is a great way to see how users are entering and leaving your goal. If you read my previous post on Magento One Page extension you will be able see one of the useful ways we used the funnel above to determine a fault in our checkout process and the steps we took to correct the process.
I will now take the rest of this post to discuss how to set up a Google goal in your Google Analytics account.
1. Login to your Google Analytics account
2. Click on the Admin tab then click on Goals
3. Add a new goal
4. Now you will need to make some choices. There are 4 types of goals you can implement. Destination is a particular page that you want your users to visit. When the user reachers that page the goal will register as complete. Duration is a way to set a goal to measure how many users spend a specified amount of time on your site. Pages/Screens per session allows you to specify a goal which measures the amount of time users spend on your site. Event goals allow you to register events on your site such as the amount of clicks on a particular link. Event goals require some basic JavaScript to register the event. You can read more about implementing event goals and all the other types of goals here.
5. Once you choose the goal you want to track you can set a value to that goal. Everytime the goal is reached the value that you set will register. If you are using this goal for an ecommerce site leave this part turned off. If the funnel option is turned on then the goal will only track users who enter the funnel at the begining and complete it. If you leave the funnel off then you will see all users who enter and leave the funnel at all the steps along the way.
6. If you have more steps along the way to the destination you will want to add those steps in the step field at the bottom of the page. For instance, if you have an ecommerce store your goal funnel will probably function in the following way:
a. Users enter the funnel on your store page
b. In the next step they will add the product to a shopping cart
c. The next step after that would be the checkout page
d. The final step (the destination) would be the thank you page.
The example steps listed above would be indivdual steps you would add to your goal funnel in the last field option shown in the screen shot below.
Once you have added your goal you can track it on your site in your analytics account under reporting ->conversions -> goals.
That’s it. Feel free to post any questions below.