Many small business owners I know use Google Analytics to keep an eye on the number of visits they have to their website.
This is great because at least the tool is being put to use, but just think for a moment. Would you rather have 1,000 website visits per month or 500 visits per month that ACTUALLY DID SOMETHING ON YOUR SITE?
See it’s all well and good getting loads of traffic to your site – but if they don’t do anything once they’re there then what’s the point?
If you want to find out how many of your website visits result in an action then you’ll need to set up a Goal – and here’s how to do it.
My example below is based on recording the number of contact form submissions that have been sent (if the purpose of your site is lead generation), but there are a huge number of Goals you can set up. If you’re an e-commerce site you may want to track the number of completed purchases, an information site may want to track the number of PDF downloads. Entertainment site – you’ll want to track number of videos watched.
So, let’s get to it!
After logging into Google Analytics click on the Admin link at the bottom left of the screen:
You will be taken to the admin page, click on Goals:
Click on the red “New Goal” button and you will see this:
Firstly give your goal a name. Keep it simple but descriptive eg Contact Form Submissions.
Then click the destination radio button and get the URL of your confirmation page. It will look something like this:
https://dmftest.live-website.com/thank-you
TOP TIP: If you don’t know the URL then submit a test contact form and copy the final URL in your browser!
Click on continue and you will see:
Paste your URL into the Red box and to check you’ve set things up correctly hit the “Verify this Goal” link.
Doing this will run the goal on your last 7 days of data and show you how many conversions you’ve had.
Click Save and you’re done!