Hey there!
I'm Benjamin from Loves Data.
In this video, you'll learn how to track your website conversions using goals in Google
Analytics.
We will walk through how to identify goals and how to classify them into macro and micro
conversions.
We will cover how to assign value to your goal conversions and how to configure them
inside Google Analytics.
And since goals only report on conversions after you’ve configured them inside Google
Analytics, I will also show you how to report on previous conversions by applying a segment
to our reports.
Okay, let's get started!
Once you’ve logged into your Google Analytics account, you will need to start by selecting
‘Admin’ on the bottom left corner...
To configure goals in Google Analytics you will need edit-level permission for the reporting
view.
If you don’t have edit-permission, then you will be able to see if any goals have
been created, but you won’t be able to add new goals or make changes to any existing
goals.
I’m currently in a Google Analytics web property, so we can see there are three columns.
There is the account column on the left...
Then the property column in the middle...
And the view column on the right...
If you’re using a Google Analytics App + Web property, then you will only see two columns,
and you won’t see the view column on the very right.
If this is the case for your account and you would like to configure a goal, then check
out my resources in the description below this video.
Okay, so let’s select ‘Goals’ on the right...
I haven’t set up any goals in my demo account yet, so we can see it says “There is no
data for this view”...
And we can see we can create a new goal...
If you have edit-level permission, then you will be able to click the button, but if you
don’t have edit-level permission, you won’t be able to create a new goal.
If this is the case for you, then you can either ask whoever manages your Google Analytics
account to change your level of permission, or you could ask them to configure the goal
for you.
Let’s select ‘New Goal’ to configure a goal for our reporting view...
First, we need to name our goal.
I’m going to name this goal ‘Email Subscriber’...
Next, we can select the ‘Goal Slot ID’...
This is a way to group goals within your reports.
There are four goal sets, and each goal set can contain up to five goals.
Let’s head to the Google Analytics demo account to see this...
Now let’s select ‘Acquisition’...
Then ‘All Traffic’...
And ‘Channels’...
The Google Analytics demo account has four goals configured and they’ve all been created
in a single goal set.
So at the top of the report we can see ‘Goal Set 1’....
We can then select this goal set to see the conversion rate for each of the goals that
have been configured...
If additional goals were configured using the other three goal sets, then these goal
sets would appear as additional tabs at the top of the report.
We would then see ‘Goal Set 2’, ‘Goal Set 3’ and ‘Goal Set 4’.
So the goal sets simply group goals together in our reports.
They don’t impact the way goals are tracked or reported.
Now let’s head back to our goal configuration...
For my goal, I’m going to leave the default ‘Goal Slot’, but remember you can change
this if you like.
Next, we need to select the ‘Goal Type’.
We can choose from ‘Destination’, ‘Duration’, ‘Pages or Screens per session’, ‘Event’
and ‘Smart Goal’ if it’s available.
Let’s run through these options...
Destination (or page based) goals let you report a conversion when someone reaches a
particular page on your website.
This is the most common type of goal people configure inside Google Analytics.
It’s typically used for people viewing a thank you page.
For example, to report on the number of people who complete your email sign up form and then
view the confirmation (or thank you) page after they’ve successfully entered their
details.
Next are engagement-based goals.
These are ‘duration’ and ‘pages or screens per session’.
These let us count a conversion after someone spends a certain amount of time on our website...
Or views a certain number of pages...
The next option is an event-based goal.
This type of goal requires that you are already tracking events into Google Analytics.
You can use events to track actions taking place within the pages of your website.
For example, people watching a video or downloading a PDF.
So to configure this type of goal, you will need to set up event tracking first.
You can then enter the event category, action, or label (or any combination of these) to
count a conversion in your reports.
To learn more about event tracking, take a moment to check out the extra resources in
the description below this video.
Finally, there are smart goals.
This type of goal will automatically count conversions for the most engaged users on
your website.
You’ll need to have Google Ads linked to Google Analytics, and at least 500 clicks
from your ads for this option to be available.
It uses Google’s machine learning to determine if a conversion should be counted.
I’d only use this option if you can’t configure a destination or event goal (or
you’re unable to implement ecommerce tracking).
Since I don’t have Google Ads linked to Google Analytics in my demo account, this
option isn’t available.
I’m going to be creating a goal for people signing up to receive my email updates.
When people sign up, they’re taken to a thank you page on my website, so I’m going
to select ‘Destination’ as the goal type.
Now let’s click ‘Continue’...
We now have to enter the destination page on our website.
This is the final thank you (or conversion) page people see after they’ve converted.
If you already know the URL for your thank you page, then you can enter into the field.
Otherwise, a good way to find this, is to head to your websites and complete the process
yourself.
So let’s head to my website...
And we can see the form that lets people sign up to receive my email updates.
So the first thing we can do is make a note of the URL...
Now let’s complete the form...
We’re now on the thank you page, so I can make a note of the URL people see once they’ve
converted.
Okay, let’s head back to Google Analytics...
I can now enter the URL of the thank you page as the ‘Destination’ for my goal...
Now we only need to enter the page, we don’t need to include our website’s domain.
So I’m going to modify this, so it’s everything after my domain...
To the left we can see it says ‘Equals To’.
This option means that the URL of page we enter will need to exactly match to the one
someone views in order for a conversion to be counted.
For example, if we enter ‘/thank-you’ it's only going to match that particular page,
it is not going to match pages with additional detail before or after the page.
So ‘/thank-you?id=563’ and ‘/thank-you?id=892’ will not be matched.
It’s only going to match exactly what’s entered.
And we can select this option to then change the way pages are matched for our goal...
We could then choose ‘Begins With’.
This will match your URLs with or without query parameters so ‘/thank-you’ will
match ‘/thank-you’, /thank-you?id=563’ and ‘/thank-you?status=true’.
And we could select ‘Regular Expression’ which is an advanced matching option.
For example, you can use regular expression matching to match multiple thank you pages
in a single goal.
If you would like to learn more about regular expressions, then check out the extra resources
in the description below this video.
I’m going to select ‘Begins With’ for my goal.
The next step is to enter a conversion value.
This is optional, but I always recommend trying to add a value for the goals you configure
in Google Analytics.
You can use a real, calculated or symbolic value.
Let’s say your goal is for people registering to attend an event and that event has a fixed
price.
You could enter the transaction value.
So the value would be the actual (or real) value for the conversion.
The one thing to highlight, is that unless the conversion is for a fixed value, like
in my example, you might want to consider using ecommerce tracking instead of a goal.
The next option is to use a calculated value.
This is commonly used for websites generating leads.
For example, if you had a consulting business and you had a contact form where you were
trying to get people to connect with you for consulting projects.
Not every single person completing the form is going to end up being a client or a customer,
but what we can do is we can do a rough calculation to understand the average value of each of
these leads.
And we also have the option of using a symbolic value.
This is useful if we’re not trying to generate actual revenue or where it’s difficult to
calculate the value.
So we use a guesstimate to rank the importance of our different conversion actions inside
Google Analytics.
From there, we can now enter our funnel steps that lead to our thank you (or conversion)
page.
I’m going to name the step and define the URL of the page for the step...
I recommend leaving ‘required’ to ‘no’ as this only alters the older ‘funnel visualization’
report inside Google Analytics.
In the majority of cases, you really don't need to turn this option on.
You can define up to 20 funnel steps for your goal by selecting ‘Add another step’.
Google Analytics also gives you the ability to preview the goal conversion rate before
you save the goal.
This is a good way to check that your goal configuration works, since you will only see
conversions reported after you save the goal.
Goals won’t provide historical conversion data.
You can click on ‘verify this goal’ to make sure that goal conversion rate is what
you'd expect and then you can click ‘save’.
We’ve now configured a goal inside Google Analytics!
Since goals start to track conversions into our reports after they’ve been configured,
let’s look at how we can create a segment to view historical conversions.
Let’s head to our reports – I’m going to head back to the Google Analytics demo
account...
We’ve seen that destination goals are based on our thank you page, so let’s head to
the pages report.
Let’s select ‘Behavior’...
Then ‘Site Content’...
And ‘All Pages’...
Now let’s search for ‘forward slash’, ‘registersuccess’, ‘dot’, ‘html’
as our thank you page...
We can now look at the ‘Unique Pageviews’ column to understand how many historical conversions
we’ve received.
And we have the option of adjusting our date range too.
This is one way to view your historical conversions.
Now I want to show you how you can create a custom report to quickly see the total number
of historical conversions.
Let’s select ‘Customization’...
And then ‘Custom Reports’...
And let’s create a new custom report...
I’m going to name the report ‘Historical Conversions’...
And let’s add a metric...
I’m going to add ‘Unique Pageviews’...
And now let’s add a dimension...
I’m going to add ‘Page’...
Now let’s select ‘Add Filter’...
And search for and select ‘Page’...
Now let’s enter ‘forward slash’, ‘registersuccess’, ‘dot’, ‘html’...
And let’s save the report...
We can now see the total number of historical conversions for our goal...
Apart from searching in our reports and creating a custom report, we can also create a custom
segment to view historical conversion too.
The nice thing about segments is that we can apply them to different reports, so let’s
select ‘Add Segment’...
Now let’s click ‘New Segment’...
Let’s name the segment ‘Conversions’...
And let’s select ‘Sequences’...
There are different ways you can create segments, but let’s keep things simple today.
I’m going to leave the default options selected at the top.
And then I’m going to select ‘Page’ for ‘Step 1’...
I’m then going to select ‘Exactly Matches’...
And I’m going to enter the URL for the page that people need to view before they convert.
For the Google Store demo account I’m going to enter ‘forward slash’, ‘signin’,
‘dot’, ‘html’...
Then I’m going to click ‘Add Step’...
I’m going to select ‘Page’...
And ‘Exactly Matches...
And I’m going to enter the conversion page.
I’m going to enter ‘forward slash’, ‘registersuccess’, ‘dot’, ‘html’...
Now I can click ‘Save’...
The numbers might be slightly different, since our segment doesn’t work in the exact same
way as goals do in Google Analytics, but the number of conversions should be fairly accurate.
Now we can head to different reports in Google Analytics and our conversion segment will
continue to be applied.
For example, let’s select ‘Acquisition’...
Then ‘All Traffic’...
And ‘Channels’...
We can now see how people found our website before they converted...
And since it’s a segment, we can even modify the date range to look further back in time...
Before we wrap up, I want to mention that it’s important to take some time to think
about the different actions you want people to take on your website.
You can then classify these actions as macro and micro conversions.
Think of macro-conversions at your primary objectives.
They’re going to be the actions that drive the most value for you and your organization.
For example, leads, purchases, members and bookings could be examples of macro-conversions.
Then you can think of micro-conversions as secondary objectives.
These will be actions that show a high-level of engagement, but that don’t provide the
same value as macro-conversions.
Examples of micro-conversions could include people entering their details to download
a PDF, subscribing to your email updates, commenting, or logging into a members area.
Once you’ve categorized actions as micro and macro-conversions, you can then configure
them as goals in Google Analytics.
So that's how you can track conversions using goals in Google Analytics.
Remember it's important to assign a value to each goal you configure so that you can
see values included in your reports.
If you want to learn more about Google Analytics, then join me in my Google Analytics Course
where you'll learn practical skills for using your reports and techniques for configuring
Google Analytics.
You can find a link to join the course in the description below this video.
Are you tracking conversions?
Do you have any tips you'd like to add?
Let me know in the comments below!
And if you found this video helpful, then please like it, so I know to make more videos
like this.
See you next time!