How to Set Google Analytics Goals and Funnels

Google Analytics Goals and Funnels

Content
Goal
Types of Goals
Goals in Report
Funnel
Why Funnel
Setting up Goals
URL Destination Goal
Goal URL Match
Case sensitive
Defining Threshold Goal
Goal Value
Goal conversion vs Transaction
Filter and Goal Tracking
Funnel Reporting
Reverse Goal Path

Content
Funnel Visualization
Finding report and selecting goals
Funnel Enterence Page
Funnel Exit Page
Progressing through Funnel
Unterstanding the Number

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 thats 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.

Types of Goals
There are three 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

Goals in Report

Setting up Goals
To set up a goal, first go the Analytics Settings page and edit the the profile for which you want to configure a goal.
You much reach the setup page using Analyics settings>profile Settings>Goal settings

URL Destination Goal
To define a URL Destination Goal, select URL Destination as the goal type. Next, enter the URL of the goal page. You dont have to enter the entire URL. You can simply enter the request URI - thats 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 weve 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 dont have to enter the entire URL of a funnel step -- just the request URI is fine

Goal URL Match Type
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.
Heres 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.
http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en_US&answer=72285&utm_id=ad

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

Defining Threshold Goal
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 conversion vs Transaction
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.
Lets 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 lets 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, youll 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.
Youll learn how to set up ecommerce tracking and how to track PDF downloads in later modules.

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

Funnel Reporting

Reverse Goal Path
Heres another report in the Goals section. Its the Reverse Goal Path report. You can see this data even if you havent 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 96 of the conversions -- or about 15% of them -- resulted from the first navigation path thats shown.
This is a great report for identifying funnels that you hadnt considered before and it can give you great ideas for designing a more effective site.

Finding report and selecting goals
To find the Funnel Visualization report, look in the Goals section.
Once you are in the report, you can select the goal you want to analyze from the Select Goal drop-down menu.

Funnel Enterence Page
The boxes along the left side of the funnel show the pages from which visitors entered the funnel.
(entrance) shows the number of times that the funnel page was a landing page.
In this example, 11,514 visitors came to the View Product Categories page from the home page.

Funnel Exit Page
The boxes on the right show where visitors went when they abandoned the funnel.
For each step, you can see the pages that visitors went to.
(exit) means that the person not only abandoned the funnel but also left your site.
In this example, there were 1,423 funnel exits from the View Product Categories page that went to the software.asp page.

Progressing through Funnel
In this example, only 29% of visits to the View Shopping Cart page actually proceeded to the login page.
The remaining 2,418 times, the person either left the funnel for another page or left the site entirely.
This data is valuable because you can use it to see what pages of your site may need to be altered.
For instance, in this example, you might want to improve the design of the the View Shopping Cart page so that more visitors log in and continue.
You can also see that only 41% of visits to the Login page continue on to the Place Order page. So, the Login page may also need improvements.

Understanding the Number
Lets look at all the numbers in the report.
Here is the number of funnel entrances to the first step of the funnel.
Here is the number of funnel abandonments that occurred from this step.
Here is the number and percentage of funnel entrances that continued on to the next step.
Here is the number of funnel entrances to the second step of the funnel.
Here is the number of visits to the second funnel step. It includes those who proceeded from the first step and those who entered the funnel at this step.
Here is the number and percentage of visits to the second funnel step that continued on to the next step.

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