For marketing managers and business owners, understanding how Online marketing and your Web presence impact the bottom line is critical. Even more important, setting specific goals around the attraction and conversation of Web traffic is a strategic means of aligning online activities with offline marketing in a way that puts the business goals in the front and center of your marketing efforts.
Google Analytics is a powerful and continuously upgraded tool allowing you to make sense of all your accumulated user data. The best of these features allow you to increase reporting and analysis efficiency by allowing goal definition and tracking. The goal of this document is to provide easy-to-use documentation on a few of the key features related to goal tracking.
Every business wants to understand what's working in their online marketing efforts. Google Analytics the key to that understanding.
Google Analytics Goals Reporting
Summary For marketing managers and business owners, understanding how Online marketing and your Web presence impact the bottom line is critical. Even more important, setting specific goals around the attraction and conversation of Web traffic is a strategic means of aligning online activities with offline marketing in a way that puts the business goals in the front and center of your marketing efforts.
Google Analytics is a powerful and continuously upgraded tool allowing you to make sense of all your accumulated user data. The best of these features allow you to increase reporting and analysis efficiency by allowing goal definition and tracking. The goal of this document is to provide easy-to-use documentation on a few of the key features related to goal tracking.
Every business wants to understand what's working in their online marketing efforts. Google Analytics the key to that understanding.
Goal Definition and Configuration
Summary One of the most valuable features of Google Analytics is its focus on tracking visitors' progress through goal funnels, or sequences of navigation steps that a user takes on the site as they go about completing an action. Examples might be filling out a form, purchasing a specific product, or interacting with a game on the site. Each step in a goal funnel corresponds to a unique URL.
Goal Definition Goal definition begins at the level of overall business goals pertaining to the website. High-level business goals translate into specific actions on the site. Finally, Google analytics provides easy to customize reports allowing you to accurately measure your key performance indicators.
Below are examples of high level, intermediate, and granular level questions and objectives:
Confidential Page 2 9/8/098/26/09
High Level: How do I want my website to help my business?
Increase proportion of sales revenue from online marketing.
Better qualify potential leads.
Increase sales of a certain product online.
Intermediate: What actions do I want users to take?
Make a purchase.
Print a page.
Create a profile.
Join an email list.
Granular: What specific information will help me increase these actions?
What kind of visitor takes these actions?
Are my target customers able to find my site?
Where are visitors abandoning my site?
How to Build Goals and Goal Funnels Goals in Google Analytics are defined by pageviews. A Conversion Funnel (a.k.a Goal Funnel), is the path you expect Visitors to take as they make desired actions on your site. Funnels allow you to track:
Which pages visitors are coming from
Where Visitors tend to abandon the process, and where they after leaving the funnel
The likelihood that Visitors will continue the process
Confidential Page 3 9/8/098/26/09
Every step in a goal funnel corresponds to a specific URL. Once you identify an action that represents successful goal completion, you need to identify a pageview that corresponds to that action, as well as each pageview leading up to the final pageview that you want to track.
An example depicting a goal funnel is shown below:
Sample Conversion Funnel:
Step 1: Contact Us HTML Page (includes "Contact" button)
Step 2: Customer Information Form
Step 3: Verify Information
Step 4: Success page
Setting up a conversion funnel that includes multiple steps, like the example above, allows you to use Google Analytics Funnel Visualization report to identify where users abandon the funnel.
An example of this report for a three-step conversion funnel process is shown below:
Confidential Page 4 9/8/098/26/09
Benefits Summary
Conversion funnels allow you to identify the stages in the conversion process where you are losing users. With this information, you can effectively correct inefficiencies, and better guide the user to the end goal, ... [download for more]
