What is an Analytics Goal?

Analytics goals are a vital part of any digital marketing strategy. They allow you to track important benchmarks such as purchases, newsletter sign-ups, form submissions, leads, and more! The data you collect from your analytics goals (called conversions when a goal is completed) will give you insight on how to optimize your campaign and dominate the market.

What Types of Analytics Goals Are Available?

There are four types of goals that are available in Google Analytics, Destination,  Duration, Pages/Screens, and Event goals.

Destination Goal

Destination goals record a conversion every time a user visits a specific page. For example, if you wanted to track purchases you would create a destination goal and link it to a thank you page. This way every time a customer completes a purchase, the purchase will be recorded as soon as they land on the thank you page. There are a few ways to create Destination goals depending on your URL. The most common type of destination goal is called an “Equals to” goal. These goals are used for standard fixed URLs. “Begins With” is another less common type of destination goal. This type of destination goal is used when your site has dynamically generated content. The newest type of destination goal is called “Regular Expression Match”. This type of destination goal is perfect for when stem, trailing parameters, or both vary in the URLs for the same site!

Duration goal

Like it sounds, duration goals record how long users stay on your site before exiting. For example, if you want to track how much of your traffic is taking the time to explore your site, you might set a duration goal for 3 minutes. This way when a user takes the time to check out your product pages or read up on your company, a conversion will be recorded once they have been on the site for 3 minutes. This analytics goal is great for measuring how effective your website is in engaging traffic and moving it through the purchasing cycle.

Pages/Screens per Session

Like a Duration goal, Pages/Screens per Session is a great way to measure how users are interacting with your site. With this goal a conversion will be tracked anytime a user visits a set amount of pages. For example if your site offers multiple products you might set a Pages/Screens per Session goal of 3. This way when a user decides to explore your product offerings, a conversion will be tracked after they have visited 3 pages. This is a very helpful tool when determining how much of your traffic is qualified.

Event goal

Event goals are a great way to track user engagement that typically won’t be tracked by Google Analytics. For example, if your site has an embedded video and you want to know just how many people are actually watching it, you would need to set up an Event goal. There are a ton of different “events” you can track with this type of goal like form submissions, link clicks, calls coming from click to call links, downloads, and more!Now that you are an analytics mastermind make sure to have a plan of action ready to go with all of that valuable data. If your Destination goal tells you that one product converts at a higher rate than another, try marketing that product more aggressively. If you're not getting sales, try setting up a Duration goal to see if users are engaging with your site. If you’re seeing low time on page trying giving your site a new user-friendly look. Use a combination of goals and determine exactly what your audience is doing on your site. Then use your newfound knowledge to push more conversions. Whether it be shifting funds from a struggling campaign to a thriving one or a complete overhaul of your site. Use analytics goals to take your business from average to extraordinary. Google Analytics is pretty tricky for casual users so to get the most out of it, reach out to an expert! Helix House is full of Analytics masters and we are all ready to take your business to the next level. If you’re ready to dominate the market, give us a call and get ready to scale!