Internet Marketing - Matt Bailey [258]
Figure 21-1: From the Overview: Website Profiles screen, set up goals by choosing the Edit action to edit the goal profile.
This will take you directly to the profile settings for your website. In the second block of settings is the goal setup. Click Add Goal. You are now at the goal page. Name the goal you are creating. In the example in Figure 21-2, the goal is to place a classified ad. This type of goal is based on the visitor completing a process that is able to be tracked because the visitor sees a specific and trackable “thank you” page at the end of the process. Any form completion, task, or event that shows the visitor a “thank you” with a specific URL page can be tracked as a goal. For publishers, pages viewed or time on site may be a goal for visitors. For lead generation or commerce sites, form completion, registrations, downloads, or subscriptions can all be tracked as an event as long as there is a specific URL page for the destination, or “thank you,” page.
Figure 21-2: The goal setup page
The URL destination is the goal type for this site, because there is a specific URL “thank you” page for this action. The goal details require a match type—if you have a specific URL page (which most sites utilize), then an exact match will suffice. The exact match is when the goal matches the exact URL. This is easily accomplished if your site’s URLs are easy to understand and read.
The second type of match is the head match. This type of match is necessary if you have a string of numbers or characters after the URL, such as https://www.example.com/checkout.php/?page=1&id=123456789. In this case, the goal can be tracked without the information appended to the URL. You can enter the URL as https://www.example.com/checkout.php/?page=1 and select Head Match for your goal.
The third type of match is the regular expression match. This is for sites that utilize wildcards, use additional parameters, or can show multiple URLs for the same pages. If you fall into this category, you will need assistance from your developers or IT staff in order to identify the constant part of the URL and to relate the inconsistent parts within the match type.
Add the URL of the “thank you” page in the Goal URL field. It’s useful to add a value to the goal (in the Goal Value field). This is an excellent method of showing value, based on the priorities of goal conversions, or creating a value for the lead. The value is whatever you set it to be. If you have a set price for any activities in this goal, then you can add the value of that price. If you have a lead generation website, then I recommend entering the value of the lead. This field is not restricted in any way, because it allows you to determine your value for each action set up in the goals.
Save your goal, which will be added as a specific measurement aspect of your reports. You will find the goal in the tabs of your regular reports. Go ahead and add any other goals that you have developed for your website, and rank them accordingly, based on your primary goals and their associated value to your business.
Track Ecommerce Sales
For ecommerce sites, a few considerations need to be addressed in developing the analytics. Initially, your Google Analytics profile settings need to be set as an ecommerce site in the main website profile. Ecommerce websites need to use a special code for tracking sales. Without this code, sales data will not be tracked with your analytics.
The tracking code works best if final checkout pages are on the same domain as the website. Third-party carts, which take users to another website for the checkout pages, are not impossible to track, but each one has its nuances that may or may not allow tracking. The key is if the “thank you” page is on your domain after the transaction is completed and if the sales data is carried through the process as well to enable the data to be tracked.
There are some basic steps contained in the setup instructions for Google, which should be followed. See https://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?answer=55528&hl=en_US.