Google Analytics Goal Set Up: Step-by-Step Guide

Google Analytics is a fundamental tool to extract in-depth information on essential aspects such as who your visitors are, where they come to your website or the keywords they have used.

That to begin with because once they have entered your page, you will be able to know precisely aspects such as the pages they liked the most, the time spent on them or from where they have left the visit.

As you can see, all of them are elementary factors to redesign your user acquisition strategies. As well as to define new strategies to retain users by modifying texts, images, CTAs, forms or any other elements of the web page.

What is Google Analytics Goal?

Google Analytics goal Setting is one of the keys to finding more excellent value in using this tool. That is why not just any type of objective is valid. On the contrary, the goals that you set for yourself in Google Analytics must be closely linked to your business objectives.

From there, the first thing to do is define the KPIs that you need to measure. Only in this way will it be possible to obtain the data that add value. But if you manage to find the right ones, the technology itself will tell you how many objectives have been met. Or what you can do to comply with those that you have not achieved. A perfect google analytics goal sets your success in your sector.

Types of Objectives

The first thing to understand is that the objectives are configured at the level of view. To do this, you have to go to the account you want to configure the objectives and access the administrator. This is where you will find the goal creation tool that Google offers you.

However, to configure goals in Google Analytics that are interesting, you must have a previously defined list of business goals. Only then can you improve with the data that this tool offers you.

Of course, remember that, on occasions, it will be necessary to divide your objectives into micro-objectives that are easier to define and identify. And it will be the sum of those micro-objectives that will tell you if you meet the final goal or not.

3 Basic Options for Creating Goals

Google analytics goal set up: a step-by-step guide

In Google Analytics, you can create 20 goals for each view. If you reach the limit and need to make another one, Google Analytics does not give you the option to delete. Therefore, you should edit any of the previously defined objectives with the data of the new one.

To configure goals in Google Analytics, the tool itself shows you 3 options:

1. Use a Target Template

If you are a beginner or are not used to setting goals in Google Analytics, the tool gives you this option. Thus, you just have to choose the template option and select a template from the list it offers you.

If you do not see any templates, they are designed to meet the needs of companies in specific sectors. Therefore, they are disabled if you have not selected any sector in your account. To obtain relevant templates, you must modify the property and select a specific sector category.

Google has created the goal templates to set reasonable goals to achieve the common goals for a business. In addition, it groups them into 4 categories:

• Income.
• Acquisition.
• Query.
• Interaction.

It is recommended to create at least one goal for each category. This way, you will understand with data how users interact with your content.

2. Create Custom Goals

How to set goals in Google Analytics

It is the option most used by most brands. You simply have to select “ Custom “, and, later, you will be able to choose a type of objective from the 4 that the tool incorporates:

• Destiny.
• Duration.
• Pages / Screens per session.
• Event.

3. Choose Smart Goals

There is a third option, smart goals, but it depends on your account meeting the following set of requirements:

• Analytics and Google Ads accounts must be linked.
• Linked Google Ads accounts should send enough traffic to your website. Clicks from Google Ads must generate at least 500 Analytics sessions to use Smart Goals in the previous 30 days. Thus, if the linked account drops to less than 250 sessions in the last 30 days in the selected view, the Smart goals will be deactivated until they increase again to at least 500.
• The report view should not receive more than ten million sessions in 30 days.
• The Analytics account must have the “Google Products and Services “ option enabled in the Data Sharing Settings section.

Once your account meets these requirements, you will need to perform the following actions:

• Enable the Smart Goals option.
• Import Smart Goals to Google Ads.
• Optimize Google Ads performance with Smart Goals. To do this, Google recommends using the Target CPA bid strategy, a flexible and automatic bid strategy.

After importing Smart Goals into Google Ads, you need to leave the feature enabled for a few weeks to accumulate enough data.

Limitations of Smart Goals

But smart goals also have the following limitations and restrictions:

• They cannot be configured or customized.
• There can only be one smart goal per view.
• They are currently only available for website views and cannot be used in mobile app views.
• They are not available for views that receive more than a million hits per day.
• Post-press conversions and cross-device conversions from Google Ads are not supported.

3 Steps to Set Goals in Google Analytics

Once the above is defined, you will see that setting goals in Google Analytics are pretty simple. It simply consists of the following 3 steps:

1. Goal Setting

Define which of the 3 types of objectives discussed you are going to use. Depending on which one you choose, you will get some options or others later.

2. Description of the Objective

It is time to name your goal and associate it with one of the 20 spaces that Analytics allows.

In addition, if you have chosen the custom objective, you will have to decide which of the 4 types of goals you want to configure. Remember that they are the destination, duration, pages/screens per session or event.

3. Objective Information

In each of these 4 types of objectives, Google Analytics will ask you for a series of data that will finish concretely configuring them. For example, if you choose a destination, you will have to indicate the following information:

Destination: Where you indicate the URL of the web page you want to measure.

Optional value: That allows you to assign a monetary value to the conversion.

Conversion funnel: You can optionally specify the route you expect traffic to follow to the destination. Use it to analyze entry and exit points that affect the target.

Setting goals in Google Analytics is quite simple if you follow these steps. But it is also true that the tool provides many options to define the objective that you are really interested in measuring. You will have to filter your desired results from how to setup google analytics funnel.