GOALS IN GOOGLE ANALYTICS

GOALS


Defining site goals and tracking goal conversions is one of the best ways to assess how well your site meets its business objectives. You should always try to define at least one goal for a website.


So what is a goal? In Google Analytics, a goal represents an activity or a level of interaction with your website that’s important to the success of your business.


Some examples of goals are an account signup,  a request for a sales call, or even that the visitor spent a certain amount of time on the website.  


GOALS - FOUR TYPES


There are four types of goals in Google Analytics.


A URL Destination goal is a page that visitors see once they have completed an activity. For an account sign-up, this might be the “Thank You for signing up” page. For a purchase, this might be the receipt page. A URL Destination goal triggers a conversion when a visitor views the page you've specified.


A Time on Site goal is a time threshold that you define. When a visitor spends more or less time on your site than the threshold you specify, a conversion is triggered.


A Pages per Visit goal allows you to define a pages viewed threshold. When a visitor views more pages --or fewer pages --than the threshold you've set, a conversion is triggered.


An Event goal allows you to attach a conversion to an event that you have defined. We’ll learn about events in a subsequent lesson.




GOALS IN REPORTS


You can see total conversions and conversion rates for each of your goals in your reports. 


FUNNELS


For each URL Destination goal that you define, you can also define a funnel. A funnel is the set of steps, or pages, that you expect visitors to visit on their way to complete the conversion. 


A sales checkout process is a good example of a funnel. And the page where the visitor enters credit card information is an example of one of the funnel steps.


So, the goal page signals the end of the activity -- such as a “thank you” or “confirmation” page -- and the funnel steps are the pages that visitors encounter on their way to the goal.




WHY DEFINE FUNNELS?


Defining a funnel is valuable because it allows you to see where visitors enter and exit the conversion process. 


For example, if you notice that many of your visitors never go further than the “Enter shipping information” page, you might focus on redesigning that page so that it’s simpler.


Knowing which steps in the process lose would-be customers allows you to eliminate bottlenecks and create a more efficient conversion path.


SETTING UP GOALS


To set up a goal, first go the Account Administration page.  Click the account and web property for which you want to configure a goal.




Select the profile to which you want to add the goal. 
Then, click the goals tab and click the plus-Goal link in one of the Goal sets.


You can create up to 4 sets of 5 goals each.



DEFINING URL DESTINATION GOALS


To define a URL Destination Goal, select URL Destination as the goal type. Next, enter the URL of the goal page. You don’t have to enter the entire URL. You can simply enter the request URI - that’s what comes after the domain or hostname.


So, if the complete URL is www.googlestore.com/confirmation.php, you only need to enter /confirmation.php.


Make sure that the URL you enter corresponds to a page that the visitor will only see once they complete the conversion activity. So, pick something like the Thank You page or a confirmation page for your goal.


You can also enter a name for the Goal -- here we’ve entered “Completed Order”. This name will appear in your conversion reports. 


Defining a funnel is optional. To define your funnel steps, you add the URLs of the pages leading up to the goal URL. Just as with goals, you don’t have to enter the entire URL of a funnel step -- just the request URI is fine.


Provide a name for each step in the funnel -- here we’ve entered “Select gift card “ for Step 1.  The names you enter will appear in your reports.


Next, we’ll talk about the Match Type setting.


GOAL URL MATCH TYPES


The match type defines how Google Analytics identifies a goal or funnel step. You have three choices for the Match Type option.


“Head Match” is the default. It indicates that the URL of the page visited must match what you enter for the Goal URL, but if there is any additional data at the end of their URL then the goal will still be counted. For example, some websites append a product ID or a visitor ID or some other parameter to the end of the URL. Head Match will ignore these.


Here’s another example, illustrated on this slide: If you want every page in a subdirectory to be counted as a goal, then you could enter the subdirectory as the goal and select Head Match.


“Exact Match” means that the URL of the page visited must exactly match what you enter for the Goal URL. In contrast to Head Match, which can be used to match every page in a subdirectory, Exact Match can only be used to match one single page. Also notice that Exact Match does not match the second pageview, “/offer1/signup.html?query=hats” because of the extra query parameter at the end. 


“Regular Expression Match” gives you the most flexibility. For example, if you want to count any sign-up page as a goal, and sign-up pages can occur in various subdirectories, you can create a regular expression that will match any sign-up page in any subdirectory. Regular Expressions will be covered in a later module.


When you use Regular Expression Match, the value you enter as the goal URL as well as each of the funnel steps will be read as a Regular Expression.


Remember that regardless of which option you choose, Google Analytics is only matching Request URIs. In other words, the domain name is ignored.


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CASE SENSITIVE SETTING


Check “Case Sensitive” if you want the URLs you entered into your goal and funnel to exactly match the capitalization of visited URLs.


DEFINING THRESTHOLD GOALS


To define a Time on Site goal, select Time on Site as the goal type. Next, select "Greater than" or "Less than" and enter an amount of time, for example 15 minutes. We'll discuss goal value shortly.


To define a Pages per Visit goal, select Pages per Visit as the goal type. Next, select "Greater than", "Equal to", or "Less than" and enter a number of pages.


Threshold goals are useful for measuring site engagement, whereas URL Destination goals are best for measuring how frequently a specific activity has been completed. If your objective is for visitors to view as much content as possible, you might set a Pages per Visit goal. Or, if you have a customer support site and your objective is for visitors to get the information they need in as short a time as possible, you might set a Time on Site goal with a "Less than" condition. 


GOAL VALUE


The “Goal Value” field allows you to specify a monetary value for goal. You should only do this for non-ecommerce goals.

By setting a goal value, you make it possible for Google Analytics to calculate metrics like average per-visit-value and ROI. These metrics will help you measure the monetary value of a non-ecommerce site. 


Just think about how much each goal conversion is worth to your business. So, for example, if your sales team can close sales on 10% of the people who request to be contacted via your site, and your average transaction is $500, you might assign $50 or 10% of $500 to your "Contact Me" goal. 


Again, to avoid inflating revenue results, you should only provide values for non-ecommerce goals.


GOAL CONVERSIONS AND TRANSACTIONS


There is an important difference between goal conversions and e-commerce transactions. 


A goal conversion can only happen once during a visit, but an e-commerce transaction can occur multiple times during a visit.


Let’s say that you set one of your goals to be a PDF download and you define it such that any PDF download is a valid goal conversion. And let’s say that the goal is worth $5.


In this case, if a visitor comes to your site and downloads 5 PDF files during a single session, you’ll only get one conversion worth $5. However, if you were to track each of these downloads as a $5 e-commerce transaction, you would see 5 transactions and $25 in e-commerce revenue.


You’ll learn how to set up ecommerce tracking and how to track PDF downloads in later modules.


FILTERS AND GOAL TRACKING


If you are using a filter that manipulates the Request URI, make sure that your URL Destination goal is defined so that it reflects the changed Request URI field.  For example, in the slide, we have a profile that defines /thankyou.html as a URL Destination goal. But we have another profile with a filter that appends the hostname to the Request URI.  So, for this profile, we need to change the goal definition accordingly. 


FUNNEL REPORTING


If you define a funnel for a goal, Google Analytics populates the Funnel Visualization report, shown here in the slide.


On the left, you can see how visitors enter your funnel. On the right, you can see where they leave the funnel and where they go.


The middle shows you how visitors progress through the funnel -- how many of them continue on to each step. 


In this example, we can see that there were 9,283 entrances at the top of the funnel and 187 completed orders, at the bottom of the funnel.


This report is very useful for identifying the pages from which visitors abandon your conversion funnel.


REVERSE GOAL PATH REPORTING


Here’s another report in the Goals section. It’s the Reverse Goal Path report. You can see this data even if you haven’t defined a funnel. It lists the navigation paths that visitors took to arrive at a goal page and shows you the number of conversions that resulted from each path.


In this example, we can see that 97 of the conversions resulted from the first navigation path that’s shown.


This is a great report for identifying funnels that you hadn’t considered before and it can give you great ideas for designing a more effective site.

Campaign Tracking and AdWords Integration

Google Analytics allows you to track and analyze all of your marketing campaigns -- including paid search campaigns, banner ads, emails and other programs.

HOW TO TRACK YOUR CAMPAIGNS

There are two ways to track ad campaigns.

For AdWords campaigns, you should enable keyword autotagging.  This allows Google Analytics to automatically populate your reports with detailed AdWords campaign information.

In order to enable autotagging, you’ll need to link your AdWords and Google Analytics accounts; we’ll look at this in more detail in the next slide.

The second way to track campaigns is to manually tag links. So, for example, you could tag the links in an email message with campaign-identifying information. You may also choose to manually tag AdWords links if you do not wish to enable autotagging.

The tags are campaign variables that you append to the end of your URLs.

INTEGRATION WITH ADWORDS: LINKING GOOGLE ANALYTICS AND ADWORDS

LINKING ADWORDS TO ANALYTICS:

By linking Google Analytics to your AdWords account, you can get advanced reporting that measures performance and ROI for your AdWords campaigns. 

Within AdWords, select Google Analytics under the Reporting tab to link your accounts.  The AdWords login that you’re using will need administrator privileges in Analytics in order to link the accounts.

If you don’t already have an Analytics account, you’ll be able to create one.

AUTO TAGGING LINKS

WHY AUTO TAGGING

Autotagging your links is important because it helps Analytics differentiate the traffic coming from Google paid listings, outlined in green on the slide,  and traffic coming from Google organic listings, which are outlined in red.

If autotagging is not enabled, your Analytics reports will show that the clicks from the sponsored listings and the organic listings are both coming from the same source: google organic.

By default, Analytics considers them both to be from Google organic search results.

So, enabling autotagging allows you to see which referrals to your site came from your paid Google campaigns and which ones came from Google organic search results.

HOW DOES AUTOTAGGING WORKS?

Autotagging works by adding a unique id, or g-c-l-i-d, to the end of your destination URLs.

This unique id allows Analytics to track and display click details in your reports.

It is important to note that 3rd party redirects and encoded URLs can prevent autotagging from working properly.

You should test these cases by adding a unique parameter to the end of your URL --- for example you could add ?test=test.

Test to make sure that the parameter is carried through to your destination page and that the link doesn’t break.

Notice that the first query parameter is always preceded with a question mark. Subsequent values are separated using ampersands.

APPENDING GCLID TO THE DESTINATION URL

Here’s an example of a gclid appended to the end of a URL.

HOW TO ENABLE AUTO TAGGING

To enable autotagging, select “Account Preferences” under “My Account”.

Make sure that the Tracking option reads “yes”. If it says “no”, click the edit link, check the box for “Destination URL Autotagging”, and click “Save Changes”.

When linking your AdWords account to Analytics for the first time, you’ll be prompted to automatically select “Destination URL Autotagging” and “Cost Data Import”. 

If you want to change your autotagging settings later, you can do so by editing your AdWords account preferences.

IMPORTING COST DATA FROM ADWORDS TO GA

IMPORTING COST DATA FROM ADWORDS

All AdWords cost data from an account will be imported into any profile in which the Apply Cost Data checkbox is selected.

Make sure both your AdWords and Analytics accounts are set to the same currency so that ROI data is accurately calculated.

Recall that when linking your AdWords account to your Analytics account, your cost data will be applied to all of your profiles.

If you don't want cost data imported into a particular profile, you can edit the profile settings. Within the "Edit Profile Information" screen, find the "Apply Cost Data" checkbox. De-select this checkbox.

And finally, note that Google Analytics is only able to import cost data from AdWords, and not from other ad networks.

DATA DISCREPANCIES BETWEEN ADWORDS AND GA

DATA DISCREPANCIES EXPECTED BEHAVIOUR

You may notice differences between the data in your Google Analytics and AdWords reports. There are several reasons for these differences.

First, AdWords tracks clicks, while Analytics tracks visits. Second, some visitors who click on your AdWords ads may have JavaScript, cookies, or images turned off.

As a result,  Analytics won't report these visits, but AdWords will report the click.

You’ll also see differences between Analytics and AdWords if the Google Analytics Tracking Code on your landing page doesn’t execute.

In this case, AdWords will report the click but Analytics will not record the visit.

Invalid clicks may also cause reporting differences because while Google AdWords automatically filters invalid clicks from your reports, Google Analytics will still report the visits.

Finally, keep in mind that AdWords data is uploaded once a day to Analytics so the results for each may be temporarily out of sync.

DD: COMMON ISSUES

Make sure that your landing pages contain the Google Analytics Tracking Code. If they don’t, campaign information will not be passed to Analytics, but clicks will register in AdWords.

Make sure that you have autotagging enabled. Otherwise, visits will be marked as Google Organic instead of Google CPC. While we strongly recommend that you use autotagging instead of manual tagging, if you do manually tag your destination URLs, you must make sure that all of them are tagged, otherwise data discrepancies will occur.

Be aware that campaign data can be lost if your site uses redirects. As a result, Analytics won’t show the visits as coming from AdWords, but your AdWords report will still report the clicks.

MANUAL CAMPAIGN URL TAGGING

TRACKING ONLINE MARKETING

Google Analytics automatically tracks all of the referrals and search queries that send traffic to your website.

However, if you are running paid advertising campaigns, you should add tags to the destination URLs of your ads. 

Adding a tag allows you to attach information about the campaign that will show up in your Analytics reports.

WHAT ABOUT ADWORDS?

Although it’s possible to manually tag your AdWords ads, you should enable auto-tagging instead.

If you manually tag your AdWords ads, the AdWords reports will only show you information by Campaign and Keyword.

If you enable auto-tagging, you’ll be able to see much more detail. The AdWords reports will show you results by ad group, matched search query, placement domain and many other AdWords attributes.     

URL TAGGING

There are five variables you can use when tagging URLs. To tag a URL, you add a question mark to the end of the URL, followed by your tag, as shown in the slide.

The variables and values are listed as pairs separated by an equals sign. Each variable-value pair is separated by an ampersand.

Let’s look at each variable.

You should use utm_source to identify the specific website or publication that is sending the traffic.

Use utm_medium to identify the kind of advertising medium -- for example, cpc for cost per click, or email for an email newsletter.

Use utm_campaign to identify the name of the campaign -- for example, this could be the product name or it might be a slogan.

You should always use these three variables when tagging a link. You can use them in any order you want.

If you're tagging paid CPC campaigns, you should also use utm_term to specify the keyword.

And, you can differentiate versions of a link -- for example, if you have two call-to-action links within the same email message, you can use utm_content to differentiate them so that you can tell which version is most effective.

EXAMPLE: TAG VERSUS NO TAG

To illustrate, let’s look at a two versions of a link to mysite.com, both placed on yoursite.com. 

The first link in the slide does not have a tag. Traffic from this link will show up in your reports as a referral from yoursite.com. There won’t be any campaign information.

The second link has a tag. Traffic from this link will show up with a source of yoursite, and it will show as a banner, instead of a referral.

Also, you’ll see this traffic reflected under summerpromo in your Campaigns report.

EXAMPLE 2: PAID KEYWORDS (CPC)

Let’s look at a destination URL from an AdWords ad.

In the first example, no tag has been provided and autotagging is disabled. In this case, you won’t see this traffic in your AdWords reports.

The second example shows how to manually tag an AdWords link. This traffic will show up in your AdWords reports, but information will be limited to campaign and keyword.

You must specify cpc as your medium and google as your source in order to see this traffic in your AdWords reports. You should also specify cpc as your medium when tagging paid search campaigns from other search engines.

The third example shows what an AdWords autotagged URL might look like once AdWords has appended the g-c-l-i-d variable to the end of the URL. 

This traffic will show up in your AdWords reports and you’ll see complete AdWords information.

WHERE IS THE CAMPAING INFORMATION REFLECTED?

You can select any of these variables as a dimension in most reports.

For example, to see all of the sources in California from which you received traffic, you could go to the Map Overlay report, drill down to California, and select Source as a dimension.

THE URL BUILDER

You can use the URL Builder in the Google Analytics Help Center to construct your URLs.

You enter in the destination URL and the values for each campaign variable. You should always use source, medium and campaign name.

The URL Builder can be found via the link displayed here on the slide, or you can search for “URL Builder” in the Analytics Help Center.

The URL builder can only construct one URL at a time,  so you probably won’t want to use it to construct every URL for every campaign.

GENERATING URLS

If you have a large number of URLs to tag, you can use spreadsheets to automate the process. 

Generate a sample URL in the URL Builder and create a simple spreadsheet formula. 

Spreadsheets can make it much easier to generate thousands of tagged URLs.

BEST PRACTICES FOR TAGGING LINKS

Stick to these best practices when tagging your advertising campaigns.

If you use AdWords, be sure to enable auto-tagging. Otherwise, you’ll miss out on important information that can help you optimize your AdWords campaigns.

Second, for each campaign, use the URL Builder to create a template URL.  Then, copy and paste from the template to create the rest of the URLs for the campaign.

Third, use consistent names and spellings for all your campaign values so that they are recorded consistently within your Analytics reports

Finally, use only the campaign variables you need. You should always use source, medium, and campaign name, but term and content are optional.

Click the Account Administration icon to manage your accounts, web properties, profiles, and user access. (You can find the icon at the top right of any screen in Google Analytics.)

You’ll be taken to the Account Administration screen which lists all of the Analytics accounts to which you have access. 

The ”Plus New Account” button is how you would create a new analytics account under the login that you are currently using.

So, when should you create a new account? If you manage the analytics services for several websites which belong to different organizations, you’ll generally want to create a new account for each organization. We’ll discuss this best practice in a few minutes.

You are permitted to create up to 25 analytics accounts per Google username. However, you can be added as an administrator to an unlimited number of accounts.

To administer an account, just click on it in the table.

Creating a new account

The ”Plus New Account” button is how you would create a new analytics account under the login that you are currently using.

So, when should you create a new account? If you manage the analytics services for several websites which belong to different organizations, you’ll generally want to create a new account for each organization. We’ll discuss this best practice in a few minutes.

You are permitted to create up to  25 analytics accounts per Google username. However, you can be added as an administrator to an unlimited number of accounts.

To administer an account, just click on it in the table.

USER MANAGEMENT/ USER PERMISSION

The “USERS” Tab

To give other users access to a Google Analytics account, click on the account name in the Account Administration screen.

You’ll be taken to a screen similar to the one shown in the slide.

Click the User tab.

All of the users who currently have access to the account will be listed in the table.

There is a settings link for each user in the table. Click this link to edit the user’s name, email address, or to change their Role – either administrator or user.

ADMINISTRATORS AND USERS

There are two Roles. “Administrators” have access to all reports and they can also modify settings.

So, Administrators can create profiles, filters, and goals, and they can add users.

Users only have read access to your reports and they can’t modify analytics settings.  Also, “Users” can be restricted to viewing only specific profiles. 

ADDING A NEW USER

To add a user, click the Plus New User button. 

A screen that looks like this will appear.  Enter the user information in the form.

In order for you to add a new user, they must have a Google Account.

If they don’t have a Google Account, ask them to create one at google.com/accounts.

Select a Role for the new user.

You can either grant read-only access to certain reports or you can make them an administrator. Remember that administrators can view all reports and modify account settings.

GRANTING ACCESS TO USER

If you select User as the role, the interface will show you a list of all profiles associated with your account.

Select the profiles you would like this user to have access to and click the “Add” button to apply your changes.

Modifying Access

To modify access for an existing user, find the user on the Users tab and click settings.

You can change the user’s role or change the profiles he or she can access.

Select the profiles you would like to remove report access to and click the “Remove” button.

MANAGING ACCESS AND ACCOUNTS

Remember that an administrator has full administrative access to all profiles within the account.

If you manage the analytics services for several websites which belong to different organizations, the best practice is to create a separate Analytics account for each organization.

Otherwise, if you were to group all the websites of all the different organizations into a single account, any Administrators you created on the account would have access to all the reports for all the websites.

Not only would the administrators be able to see the reports of other organizations, they’d also be able to change analytics settings on profiles that don’t belong to them.

This raises the potential for an Administrator to accidentally edit -- or even delete -- another organization’s settings and data.

CHANGING UR LOGIN EMAID ADDRESS

If you want to change your e-mail login, create a new Google account.  Add your new login as an administrator to your Google Analytics account.

PROFILES

http://support.google.com/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55486

A profile is a set of rules that defines the data you see for a web property. For example, you might have web property example.com for which you have three profiles.

One of the profiles might show all the data for all the traffic that comes to example.com.

Another profile might use filters to only show the data for traffic to a certain subdirectory.

Still another profile might use a different set of filters to show only another subset of data.

To see a list of the profiles that belong to a specific web property, navigate to that web property from the Account Administration screen.

Once you are on the screen for the web property, click the Profiles tab. On the Profiles tab, you’ll see a Profile selector menu that lists all the profiles.

Profiles are very flexible -- they are basically just a set of rules that define what data is to be included in the reports.

Here is a schematic showing an Analytics account with one web property and two profiles.

Both profiles contain traffic data for the example.com web property.

One profile might contain all the traffic data.

The other profile might be filtered so that it contains only traffic from AdWords visitors.

In addition, you might want to give certain users access only to the filtered profile. This has the effect of only allowing these users to see AdWords traffic to example.com.

THE PROFILES TAB

Here is the Profiles tab for the “example.com test 1” profile.

If you are an administrator on the account, you’ll see the sub-tabs that list the Assets, Goals, Users, Filters, and Profile Settings that are associated with the profile.

You’ll also see the “Plus New Profile” button – which you can use to create a new profile.

But, if you are not an administrator, you’ll only see the Assets tab.

That’s because you need to be an admnistrator to add new profiles or to edit a profile’s goals, users, filters, and settings.

However, you don’t need to be an administrator to add or edit assets.

This includes advanced segments, annotations, and custom alerts.

PROFILES, GOALS, FILTERS AND USERS

Each profile has its own goals, which you set on the goals sub-tab.

You control who has access to the profile via the Users sub-tab.

And, you can use the Filters sub-tab to control what data is included in the profile.

PROFILE SETTINGS

The Profile Settings sub-tab is where you enable e-commerce and site search reports, set your preferred time zone, and other settings.

REMOVING PROFILES

To remove a profile, you can simply click Delete this profile on the Profile Settings sub-tab. You’ll need to be an Administrator to do this.

 Be careful that you are deleting the correct profile, because you won’t be able to recover the historical data for the profile once it’s been deleted.