You’ll find your Goal settings in the View column of the Admin screen of Google Analytics.
You’re given two options at the top of the box which will list out all your Goals: +New Goal and Import from Gallery.
If you aren’t sure where to begin with setting Goals and need some inspiration, try Import from Gallery. It will open an overlay with tools to show you different pre-made Goals that were submitted by users and provided by Google.
In the Gallery you’ll be able to filter by category and rating, and sort the results based on rankings. Icons next to the solution titles will tell you what features the solution has. There are multiple things that can be imported, like dashboards, custom reports, and segments. Look for the ones with a flag next to them to review solutions that have Goals.
If you want to create a Goal of your own, click on +New Goal to begin the process. There, you’ll be given a choice between 11 common use case templates, and Custom.
Choosing a template will prefill the name on the second step, and preselect the most appropriate type of action the Goal will be tracking. Selecting Custom will take you to step 2 with nothing preselected or filled in for you.
There are four types of tracking that can be applied to your Goals. You can only track one of theses values per Goal, so each action you want to track will need a Goal of its own.
The four types of values you can specify are:
- Destination – A page on your website that a visitor must hit.
- Duration – A length of time your visitor’s session must last.
- Pages/Screens per session – A number of pages each visitor must view per session.
- Event – A visitor must complete an action that results in an Event matching the filter specified.
For this walkthrough, we’ll use the Event value tracking type.
On this website, I have been tracking outbound clicks from the site to the business’s Facebook page as Events (this process was made simple by use of a WordPress Plugin for managing Google Analytics). But I’m also tracking all other outbound clicks, but getting people to visit the Facebook page is the most important of those possible Events.
These outbound click events are labeled this way:
- Category – Outbound
- Action – domain of the site, in this case www.facebook.com
- Label – the actual URL of the page visited, in this case /AdellesCoffeehouse
I have many different kinds of outbound clicks on this site, and a few different Facebook pages linked from this site, so I chose the Label of “/AdellesCoffeehouse” for the criteria this Goal will check for, because it is the most unique and specific item that represents what I’m trying to track.
Next, I leave the Event value as the Goal Value for the conversion. This Event counts each time the link is clicked, which is the count I want to use. If I wanted to assign a specific dollar value, I could click the switch button and enter a dollar amount.
The last option, “Verify this Goal” allows me to check my entries by showing what percent conversion rate I would have based on the last 7 days of data. This tells me that Google Analytics was able to take what I entered as Goal criteria and confirm that there is matching data. When you’re doing this step, do a gut check on whether the conversion rate sounds accurate to you. If it’s very high or very low, you may have set something inaccurately. If it’s 0.0% you have either made an error, or simply don’t have any data yet.
Click the Create Goal button, and you’re done!
Goals will automatically begin collecting data as soon as they’re created, and you can test them immediately by visiting the Real Time tab in your reporting and looking under Conversions. Test your Goal yourself by visiting your site and perform the action you outlined in your Goal with the Real Time Conversions report open in another window where you can see it as you test.
You should always test any new Goals or other big tracking changes you make right away. This allows you to catch potential data errors before too much time elapses, and keeps your Views consistently coherent in the story they tell.
0 comments