Quick Tip on Google Analytics
A lot of what we look at with our clients revolves around setting goals for the site. It's important to know if your site is delivering. Here's a quick rundown for setting goals on your site.
First, Goals must correspond to a measurable action performed by your website's visitors, for example, a visit to a "thank you" page. This combination of a business objective and a measurable action make up a Goal. If your site is about lead generation then you would want to set up your goal for people that complete your 'Contact Us' form or similar form that let's people inquiry about your products or services.
To create a Goal, follow these simple steps:
Step 1) Define your Funnel
Go to your site and move through the pages required to complete your Goal. As you do so, write down the URLs for each of the pages in sequence. If your flow has only one step then you don't need to define a funnel -- just the page where the visitor ends up.
Step 2) Configure your Goal Settings
Goals aren't part of the report themselves. They have to be created as part of the Profile inside GA. First, log in to your Google Analytics account and then click "Edit" beside your profile.
Go to Conversion Goals and Funnel and click "Edit"
Set "Active Goal" to "On"
Chances are your "Match Type" is going to be "Exact Match". So choose that and enter in the URL for page that the user gets when they have completed the goal. For example the URL might be "contact_form_thankyou.html".
One thing that a lot of people get stuck on is the dollar value. It's easy to figure out the dollar value if you sell something on your site. But if you don't, what's the lead worth to you? A quick and dirty way to guesstimate it is to take your Average Sale * Your Gross Profit Margin * Your Close Rate (in percentages). So if you are able to close 1 in 10 leads that you get and your average proposal value is $10,000 with a GPM of 30% then your value for a lead is $300 (10,000 * 10% * 30%).
Step 3) Define Your Goal Funnel
If you have more than one page that makes up the flow of visitors through your conversion process then you would enter the URL and a name for each step in your funnel. Again, if you only have one step (the Goal) than you don't need to complete this section.
Step 4) Wait for your data to come in
Unfortunately, Goals only work from the moment you put them in. So you need to wait for the data to appear in your reports. Once it i, go to the Goals section of your Report and open the Funnel Visualization Report.
Now you can see how well the site is performing for your goals.
Need help with GA? Give us a call and we'll see if we can solve all of your analytics problems.
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