Your Google Analytics Account could be more beautiful
A beautiful Google Analytics account has at least one conversion goal.
40%. My guess would be 40% of all Google Analytics setups don’t use goal tracking.
Why should you care about goal tracking?
Your website, landing page or blog is online for a reason. You have spent some time to get it right. And you even spend 5 minutes to add the tracking code.
But may I ask you if your website is successful?
Don’t you tell me about your sessions? That’s not an indicator if you are successful. It’s telling you just something about your reach.
Let’s take a simple example. You own a bookstore. Then you only look for your visits. So you only count the visitors in your shop. Is your bookstore successful? I guess, you will also look for your orders and revenue.
For your website, you should check your orders or revenue as well.
But what if you don’t have transactions on your site?
Let’s see what you have.
You have some input forms — Newsletter, Contact Us
When people leave their email address on your website, they want to learn more about your product. You should track every submit. It’s a conversion.
Send this to your website team or yourself (if you are the one doing the tracking):
Hey guys,I would like to track every submit person do on our website. Please add a tracking to the forms on these pages:
-
-
-..Here is a tool to add event tracking to form submits: https://raventools.com/gaconfig/google-analytics-event-tracking/contact-form/
Or if we use the Google Tag Manager, have a look here: https://www.optimizesmart.com/event-tracking-in-google-tag-manager-v2-complete-guide/#FormSubmit
After adding the submit events, please set up a conversion goal like described here:
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1032415?hl=en
https://blog.kissmetrics.com/critical-goal-types/
You use live chat
Someone contacts you via live chat. Most of the time they want to have further information about your product. This activity is a conversion.
Send this to your website team or yourself (if you are the one doing the tracking):
Hey guys,I would like to track whenever some are starting a chat.
You can find some tips for tracking chat service activity with GA here:
- Olark: https://www.olark.com/help/google-analytics
- Snapengage: https://developer.snapengage.com/javascript-api/javascript-events/
-Zopim: https://zopim.zendesk.com/entries/23819526-How-to-use-Google-Analytics-with-Zopim
- Or reach out to the customer support of our vendor for helpAfter adding the chat events, please set up a conversion goal like described here:
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1032415?hl=en
https://blog.kissmetrics.com/critical-goal-types/
Your primary focus is content
Your website is about content (like this blog). Then you’re successful when people read your posts. It’s possible to measure if a visitor has read a blog post (based on scroll level and time on page). The setup is a little bit more complicated. But I’m sure your developers can do it.
Send this to your website team or yourself (if you are the one doing the tracking):
Hey guys,I would like to track the reading activity when some are on one of our content pages.
There is a script that monitors the scroll level in combination with the time on page:
http://scrolldepth.parsnip.io/If we use the Google Tag Manager:
https://www.optimizesmart.com/implementing-scroll-tracking-via-google-tag-manager/ (check Method 2)After adding the scroll events, please set up a conversion goal like described here:
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1032415?hl=en
https://blog.kissmetrics.com/critical-goal-types/
You make content shareable for social networks
On every page, you have these little share buttons for social networks. That’s great. Then let’s track if someone clicks on it.
Send this to your website team or yourself (if you are the one doing the tracking):
Hey guys,I would like to track all clicks on the sharing buttons on all pages.
Here is a Google documentation on how to setup the tracking of social analytics:
https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/analyticsjs/social-interactionsHere is a guide how to track the clicks on the buttons:
http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/15123-social-button-analytics.htmlIf we use the Google Tag Manager, you can find a tutorial here:
http://www.simoahava.com/analytics/google-tag-manager-track-social-interactions/After adding the click events, please set up a conversion goal like described here:
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1032415?hl=en
https://blog.kissmetrics.com/critical-goal-types/
You have pages that show additional information on a product
Products with a higher price tag or a subscription have longer sales cycles. So you unlikely get a transaction conversion when someone visits you for the first time. But often you have content that gives more detail about the product. The content can be a PDF download, a detail information tab, a product features page, a video replay or an extended slideshow. Or if you are a local business and people check your “location” page, it’s possible that they want to visit you. So you can add a conversion goal when a visitor visits this page, watches the video or clicks through the slideshow.
Send this to your website team or yourself (if you are the one doing the tracking):
Hey guys,I would like to track when a visitor is looking for additional information.
Please add a conversion goal like described here:
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1032415?hl=en when someone visited one of these pages:
-
-
-…
Using internal search and proceed
The use case can be vague. So you should check the numbers and use cases. But if people start to use your internal search and click on a result, there is an indication that they recognize your website as an authority on a topic. To make it more reasonable, you could also track the time on the page they have clicked on.
Send this to your website team or yourself (if you are the one doing the tracking):
Hey guys,I would like to track when visitors using our search on the website.
Could you please add a tracking like described here:
http://www.lunametrics.com/blog/2015/02/24/enable-site-search-reporting-google-analytics/Please add afterwards a conversion goal for everyone who has searched:
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1032415?hl=en
https://blog.kissmetrics.com/critical-goal-types/To see who has searched and clicked on a search result we need to add a segment like this one (showing all people who have searched and then immediately visited a page afterwards. You can make it more bulletproof if we track clicks on search result pages as events):
https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/template?uid=fYzNfiLRTgWhswrWlvSFFg
I hope after reading this, you have found something you could track as a conversion goal. Maybe you have found many goals. Great, install them all.
Why is it a good idea to track conversions?
Just because it gives you more information in Google Analytics about the performance.
* You can check the performance of traffic channel based on your conversion goals:
https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/#report/acquisition-channels/
* You can check the performance of your landing pages based on your conversion goals:
https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/#report/content-landing-pages/
* You can check which combination of traffic channels result in goal conversions:
https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/#report/bf-top-conversion-paths/
So please invest this little more time to improve your Google Analytics tracking. Now you can’t tell that you don’t know what to track as a conversion goal.
If you still don’t know what to track, please reach out to me. I’m happy to help.
