Before you do anything else I want you to do this! If you have a website YOU MUST setup Google Analytics with custom goals and start reviewing the data regularly!
Goals provide business owners, marketers and management a great starting point for understanding website performance, enable informed decision making that will permeate every function of your business and set the foundation for analysis of your website sales funnel and conversion rate optimisation. More on that coming soon.
Google Analytics allows you to easily create and implement goals that track your desired digital and subsequently the associated business outcomes. This provides transparency into online performance across digital channels, campaigns, and devices allowing you to make better decisions regarding the allocation of your limited resources.
So what Google Analytics goals should you setup?
Your goals should relate to growth drivers and desired business outcomes, ideally be linked to revenue contribution and be named intuitively so even management can easily understand what you’re reporting on and see the relevance.
Configuring goals within Google Analytics is reasonably straightforward however you’ll likely need a developer to assist you with part of the process depending on your website. Before you begin spend some time planning the setup of your goals, taking time to classify your goals into the following groups; ‘revenue’, ‘acquisition’, ‘inquiry’, ‘engagement’ or ‘custom’. Further to this you’ll also need to determine type with goals relating to either the ‘destination’, ‘duration’, ‘pages/screens per session’, or an ‘event’ on your website.
Here are some examples of common and useful Google Analytics goals that you could setup for your website:
Sales – track each time a user makes a purchase from your website.
Leads – track the number of leads achieved from your website.
Telephone Calls – track the telephone calls that originate from your website.
Downloads – track the number of times your forms, white papers, PDFs or eBooks etc. are downloaded from your website.
Engagement – track user behaviour, such as the number of people who read 3+ or more blog articles or consume 5+ pages on your website.
Destination – track how many users reach a specific destination on your website, such as a landing page or post purchase thank you page.
Email Newsletter Sign Ups – track the number of users who sign up for your email newsletter at your website.
Add to Cart – track the number of users who add products to their shopping cart on your website.
Cart Abandonment – track the number of users who leave your website with products within their shopping cart.
Social Interaction – track social interaction that originates from your website such as likes or comments.
Once you’ve established your Google Analytics goals the next step is to assign an economic value
This is essential! The economic or dollar value should be based on the goals specific or historical contribution and influence on financial performance. Once you’ve done this Google Analytics will then display the revenue contribution that each goal has made within Google Analytics reports. Now that’s going to get management’s attention, help you build a business case for investment or demonstrate success.
But how do you know what revenue amount to allocate to a Google Analytics goal?
Sometimes it easy…
For example, if you know that your average sale value is $4,500 then the goal value assigned to the ‘Sales’ Goal achievement will be $4,500.
Sometimes it’s not so simple and related business data needs to be considered in order to determine an accurate goal value.
For example, if you determine from your business’s internal sales data that you convert approximately 10% of all telephone calls originating from your website made to your business into a sale and your average sale value is $4,500 then you might assign a value of $450 to each ‘Telephone Call’ goal achievement.
As you can see, sometimes it’s not an exact science but most of the time careful consideration and thought will yield useful approximations.
Evolve from a marketer to a business rockstar!
Armed with compelling Google Analytics goal data you can use the insights gleaned in order to report more effectively on online performance, show the link between marketing initiatives and business outcomes, demonstrate revenue contribution, drive growth and more effectively optimise your online marketing efforts for improved performance.
IMAGE > Whaam! By Roy Lichtenstein. 1963 diptych.
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