Chris Anders - Internet Strategy Consultant

Setting and being able to measure online goals for your website visitors can be extremely helpful in gaining insight into how particular online marketing campaigns and your website in general is performing.  For example, if you have a form on your website tracking the traffic sources that lead to people making an enquiry can be helpful in optimising your online conversion strategy.

Google Analytics lets you track certain visitor behaviours and then feeds this data into a wide range of reports.  For example, you can track when visitors reach a certain web page (URL) - perhaps a thank you message after they have submitted a form, spend over a certain amount of time on the site or look at more than a certain number of pages.  Goals will be discussed in greater detail in another posting.

To set a goal using Google Analytics, when you first access Analytics you will be presented with a list of web sites you have set up with Google tracking code.  Choose the website that you wish to add a goal to and then click EDIT in the actions column.  Google Analytics lets you set up to 20 conversion goals for each profile and organise these into up to four sets of goals.  To add a new goal click the "Add goal" link in your profile document.  Give the goal a unique name and choose whether it should be triggered by a visitor reach a certain web page (URL destination), spending more than a certain amount of time on the site or looking at more than a certain number of pages.

if you want to measure who makes an enquiry or completes a transaction, select the "URL destination" option and then copy and paste the web address of your "Thank you" or "Form processed" page into the field.  For most URL's the "head match" option is probably the best.

Google Analytics also lets you track funnel URLs - a funnel is a series of pages leading up to the goal URL.  For example, the funnel may include steps in your checkout process that lead you to the thank you page (goal).