Measuring your website goals with Google Analytics
Website reports helps you measure and analyse your website’s performance.
Most website reports contain simple website statistics such as how many visits your website had, where visitors came from, and which web pages were viewed.
Google Analytics takes website reporting to a new level, enabling you to set up and measure specific website goals. For this and many other reasons, Google Analytics outshines basic website statistic reporting by far.
In this article, we cover :
- what Google Analytics goals are
- how to set up Google Analytics goals
- interpreting Google Analytics goal reports
Defining your website goals
In our article “Web Strategy - Maximising Return On Your Website Investment”, we mention a crucial step in website planning - defining your website goals.
Website goals vary for each business. Some common examples are :
- receiving website enquiries through a contact form
- signing up newsletter subscribers
- selling products online
If planned and designed well, your website will lead your audience toward your goals. To confirm that your website is achieving those goals, you need to measure the results. This is where Google Analytics excels.
What are Google Analytics goals?
In Google Analytics, a goal is achieved when a specified web page is visited. This “goal page” (sometimes referred to as a landing page) is usually the result of someone taking a particular course of action on your website.
For example, when someone completes the newsletter subscription form on our Sharp Thinking website, then confirms their subscription via email, they are taken to a “thank you” page. Therefore, our newsletter subscriptions goal measures thank you page visits.
How to set up a Google Analytics goal
1. Get a Google Analytics account
If you don’t already have a Google Analytics account, you can sign up for free at http://www.google.com/analytics. If you are already using Google Adwords, you can add Analytics to the same account. Once you have an account, you need to add your website profile. Doing this generates code that your web designer must insert into your web pages.
Contact us to find out more
2. Edit your website profile settings
After logging into your account, click on Edit next to your website profile (as circled in the picture below).
3. Add a new goal
Scroll down to the Conversion Goals and Funnel section and click on Edit under the Settings column for any unconfigured goal (as circled in the picture below)
4. Enter your goal settings
Enter the full website address of your goal page and a plain English name to use in your reports. In the picture below, I have used our previously mentioned newsletter subscription thank you page as an example.
The Define Funnel section is optional and only required if visitors are required to pass through a specific series of web pages before reaching the goal page. To do this, enter the full website address of each page in the URL column and a plain English name in the Name column.
5. Attach a value to your goal
If your goal can be measured in monetary terms, enter the amount in the Goal value field under Additional Settings (as shown in the example below)
6. Save your changes
Click on the Save Changes button to retain the new settings you have entered. Report data is updated about every 24 hours.
Interpreting Google Analytics goal reports
Now for the interesting part. Let’s look at a few sample Google Analytics goal reports from our Sharp Thinking website. You will find many more reports by clicking around the menus, but here we will cover 4 reports:- Goals Overview Report
- Goal Conversion Rate Report
- Keyword Goal Conversion Rate Report
- Referring Sites Goal Conversion Rate Report
- The default date range is always the last month. To view a different date range, click on the arrow next to the dates and adjust it.
- Move your cursor over the graphs to display exact numbers
- Click on links within the report to drill down into more detail
- Click on question marks for an explanation of report terms
- Click on the About This Report button under Help Resources in the left-hand column for a description of any report you are viewing.
Goals Overview Report
Finding this report in the Google Analytics menu
From the left-hand menu, click on Goals (as circled in the picture above)
What the sample report above shows us
For each goal, the total number of times it was achieved (conversions) for the given date range, and how many times for each day.
Our interpretation of this report
We gained 6 new newsletter subscribers, 3 of which were on the same day. As our newsletter is fairly new these figures are quite low, but we expect to see them increase over time as current subscribers start to recommend the newsletter to others - something we will actively encourage.
Goal Conversion Rate Report
Finding this report in the Google Analytics menu
From the left-hand menu, click on Goals, then Conversion Rate (as circled in the picture above)
What the sample report above shows us
For goal number 1, the percentage of times it was achieved (conversions) in relation to the number of visits to the website in the given date range. Select other goals using the arrow next to the goal name. Underneath the graph, conversion rates are shown for each day. Click on View By Hourly to show average conversion rates based on the time of day.
Our interpretation of this report
Only 2.19% of the visits to our website resulted in new newsletter subscribers - definitely some room for improvement there.
Keyword Goal Conversion Rate Report
Finding this report in the Google Analytics menu
From the left-hand menu, click on Traffic Sources, then Keywords, then under the graph click on Goal Conversion (as circled in the picture above)
What the sample report above shows us
For each goal, and as a total of all goals, the percentage of times they were achieved (conversions) in relation to the number of visits to the website resulting from Google or other internet searches in the given date range. If the goal has a dollar value attached to it, a per visit goal value is also shown. Underneath the graph, the same information is broken down into each keyword used by searchers to find the website.
Our interpretation of this report
Only 1.23% of the visits coming from searches resulted in a new newsletter subscriber. However, 50% of the visits coming from a search using the keywords “website planning” resulted in a new newsletter subscriber. If the numbers were significant, we could interpret this to mean that people subscribing our newsletter are interested in website planning, and therefore we should include more articles about website planning in future newsletter editions.
Referring Sites Goal Conversion Rate Report
Finding this report in the Google Analytics menu
From the left-hand menu, click on Traffic Sources, then Referring Sites, then under the graph click on Goal Conversion (as circled in the picture above)
What the sample report above shows us
For each goal, and as a total of all goals, the percentage of times they were achieved (conversions) in relation to the number of visits to the website resulting from links from other websites (excluding search engines) in the given date range. If the goal has a dollar value attached to it, a per visit goal value is also shown. Underneath the graph, the same information is broken down into each referring website.
Our interpretation of this report
If we compare the overall Referring Site Conversion Rate for newsletter subscriptions (9.43%) to the Search Conversion Rate for the same goal in the previous report (1.23%), we can see that the conversion rate from searches is much lower. Given that most internet searchers won’t have heard of us before, it’s not surprising that only a small percentage subscribed to our newsletter, but hopefully they found some interesting content and may bookmark our site and subscribe on subsequent visits.
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