Google Analytics Goal Tracking Helps You Make Better Business Decisions

Google Analytics goal tracking allows marketers to record specific actions or interactions within their website. These goals are then used to report on website activity via tables, graphs, and flow charts.

While goals are generally track a completed conversion, such as an inquiry form submission or product sale, they can also be used to track specific website events.

I’ve traditionally used goals within Google Analytics is to obtain a better understanding of our successful website activity such as an inquiry for custom WordPress development or stock theme sale. I do this because I want to know where the visitor came from and what the visitor looked at prior to completing the given task.

But this type of reporting is only one piece of Google Analytics goal tracking. This feature has so much more to offer!

While the above video gives you an overview of goals, it only scratches the surface of this powerful tool.

Goals not only provide a plentiful amount of data, they provide some amazing visual reports. Google Analytics goals are a very cool way of taking that PowerPoint sales funnel and automating it within your website. That automation then provides a mechanism for data diving, reporting, and better decision making.

A few points about Google Analytics goals:

• Goals can be applied to specific pages, posts, forms, or products
• Goals can track how many pages are view id n a given session
• Goals can show how long a visitors stay on your website
• Goals can show how many times a visitor come to your website prior to making a purchase
• Goals can have a sum of money assigned to them as a value of completion

Did I mention that all of this data is free? Yep it is. Say what you want about Google, but they provide a great deal of data and analytics for free.

Why I Love Google Analytics Goals

A few reasons why I use Google Analytics goal tracking:

• Goals can help you view both conversion rates for different inquiry forms or offerings
• Goals help highlight abandonment rates within your website
• Goals can help you see trends
• Goals can help you pinpoint where converting traffic originates from – i.e. does Facebook produce revenue?
• Goals can help you track marketing program ROI
• A dip in goal activity will help alert you of unknown issues

Goals allows website owners and marketers to track key activity such as:

• Contact inquiry or leads
• Product sale via an e-commerce store
• Membership signup
• Website registrations
• Newsletter signups
• White paper downloads
• File or eBook downloads
• Customer reviews
• Blog comments
• Social sharing

When we look at e-commerce sales specifically, we can learn a lot from the standard Google Analytics goal tracking:

• Sales performance by date
• Sales performance by individual products
• Top sources of revenue – organic search, direct, social media, etc.
• Conversion rates at each step of the sales funnel
• Conversion rates by user device
• Conversion rates by geography
• Conversion paths – i.e. organic search followed by a direct visit leads to purchase
• Time to purchase
• Path length – activity steps prior to actual purchase
• Visitor paths within the website prior to purchase

This amazing data not only helps highlight high performing conversions and sales, the data helps you analyze virtually everything happening on your website prior to that conversion taking place.

Ready to Jump into Using Google Analytics Goals?

After seeing all this goodness, how could you not want to jump into using goals?

Surprisingly enough, many people I talk to have never heard of them. When I do explain goals and their important, they have a look of intimidation.

Don’t be intimidated! Goals are easy to set up and utilize in your sales and marketing efforts.

Let’s watch a short how to overview from Google:

Not so bad right? Once you set up once goal, you’ll see they are fast and easy to define.

Remember this – your business decisions are only as good as the information you available.

With Google Analytics goals tracking you have a plentiful amount of information, which means you can make solid business decisions that lead to long-term business success.