Using Analytics on Your Site - Measuring Conversion Rate
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This is one of my favorite measurements, as it tracks the entire performance of the website. All investments in SEO, PPC, design, copy writing, content, and conversion optimization come down to this statistic. How many visitors do what you want them to do? How many subscribe, buy and become customers?
In this section we'll focus on goal tracking (conversion tracking) with Google Analytics.
"A goal is a website page which a visitor reaches once they have made a purchase or completed another desired action, such as a registration or download." - Google Help
Setting Up Goals in Google
To set up goals in Google Analytics you must meet a few requirements:
There must be a clear URL for the goal page, such as a thank you page. Basically it's a page that users see after they do what you want them to do. This page should be only available upon completion of your goal. If it can be accessed otherwise (through search results, links, etc), then conversion results will be inflated.
You must make up a name for your goals. For example, "registration" or "sale."
You can specify a funnel to the goal page. The funnel represents the page flow before your visitors become customers. In e-commerce, this is the checkout process. In lead generation, this is the application process. Once you specify the funnel, Google will track goal completion. By analyzing goal completion you can learn the exact step in the conversion process that hurts your bottom line.
Assign a value to your goal. A goal's value helps you estimate the ROI delivered with each conversion.
Google says that a good way to value a goal is to evaluate how often the visitors who reach the goal become customers. If, for example, your sales team can close 10% of people who request to be contacted, and your average transaction is $500, you might assign $50 (i.e. 10% of $500) to your "Contact Me" goal. In contrast, if only 1% of mailing list sign-ups result in a sale, you might only assign $5 to your "email sign-up" goal.
I personally think this is too much information to share with Google, since it can easily estimate how much you make with your website. As it measures goal values on other competing sites in your industry, it can create ROI benchmarks and use that data to price fix their AdWord bids with the excuse of quality scores.
Setting up your goals is easy. Keep in mind that it's essential to redirect users to the goal page once they have completed your action. Without a goal page, Google cannot measure your conversion rate. To set up goals, go to Analytics Setting and click on "edit" in the Actions tab (far right).Click on "edit" next to the goal and enter the required URLs along with the appropriate information.
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