by Katie Paine
If you haven’t read it yet, start by reading my article “If Impressions Are Sperm, Then Conversions Are the Children We’ve Always Wanted” which will explain the basics of conversions and goal setting for Google Analytics. And if you’ve never used goals or conversions in Google Analytics—or if after you’ve read this article you want to know more— then Google’s “Set up and edit Goals” page is the place to go for the nuts and bolts.
First, decide what your goal(s) are. It might help to talk to your sales and marketing folks and see if they have any data that would correlate traffic to specific URLs on your website to leads or some other customer action. If they don’t, talk to them about what they think indicates an intent to purchase. It might be downloading a white paper, giving an email address, or going to the “Contact” page. If you are not an e-commerce site, then your goals might be something else, like a step on the way to becoming a volunteer, or an indication of the engagement you want to increase, or some other website action that fits your situation.
Whatever it is, you need the URL, because that is how you tell Google Analytics what your goal is. Google calls completed goals “conversions,” and it records a new conversion every time someone visits the URL.
Now go onto Google Analytics, go to the Admin page, and set up a new goal. It should look like this:
You can create a custom template, but it’s easier to just use one of the existing templates. Select the action that you’ve decided is your goal.
Now go to the next step and give your goal a name:
Hit “Next Step” and then enter the URL for the page that is your goal:
If you want to, you can assign a monetary value to each conversion. If the conversion indicates that you just sold something worth $X, then that value is probably X. But if the conversion is something of less obvious value, then you will have to be a bit creative in assigning a value for the conversion.
If, for instance, leads are important to you and you think that some conversion (say, downloading a paper) is a strong indicator that the person will go on to become a lead, then estimate that probability. Your sales department should know the average value of a lead. So multiply the probability times the value of a lead and you’ll have the estimated value of the conversion. Enter that in the “Value” box. If you are a non-profit the value would be calculated based on the average value of a member, or donor, or a volunteer.
Click “Verify this Goal,” and you’re all set. ∞
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