Advanced Google Analytics: Conversion Goals Wrapup
June 5, 2008 in Analytics, Expert Advice
If you're not using Google Analytics, you're missing out. It's ridiculously powerful, informative, easy to set up, and it's free. If you're serious at all about your web efforts, you need to be using it.
I just finished up a series teaching you how to take Google Analytics beyond the very basic setup. In it I cover the use of Conversion Goals that help you go beyond tracking page views, to tracking desired visitor actions like making a purchase, filling out a form, signing up for an account, joining an email list, etc.
Here are quick links to the full guide:
- Part One: Basics of goal set up. What they are, how they work, how to set yours up today.
- Part Two: Setting up Funnels. Learn how many people start the goal conversion process, how many finish, and where the stragglers stop progressing.
- Part Three: Tracking goals with no distinct associated pageview. Let's say you want to track a software download, or your goal doesn't have a unique page at the end.
- Part Four: Tracking income from your goals. Beef up your analytics with information about exactly how your web traffic is impacting your bottom line.
My hope is that you'll utilize this valuable resource to improve your chances of success. Best of luck friend.
p.s. I've had a couple people ask, and if this is all overwhelming and you'd rather just hire me to set it all up for you, drop me a note.
Advanced Google Analytics: Conversion Goals (Part Four)
June 5, 2008 in Analytics, Expert AdviceIn part one of this series I covered the basics of setting up goals in GA (Google Analytics).
In part two I covered setting up funnels.
In part three I discussed tracking goals with no distinct associated pageview.
Today, in the final installment, we'll be discussing how to track the income from certain goals. Google calls this "goal value tracking."
It's for those of you selling something. It allows you to track the income you make from a given goal. Having this extra information in your web analytics is very powerful in helping you make the right decisions.
Tracking income from your goals
Ok, there are three common scenarios where you want to track goal values.
Common Scenarios:
1) You have a lead generation form as your goal. You know that you typically convert 10% of your leads to a
$100 sale. For your Goal value when you set up your goal, you'd put $10. You're done.
Like this:
2) You have a store, and you sell a $25 eBook, and you only ever sell one at a time. Put $25 as your goal value, and you're done.
3) Let's say you have a store where you sell any number of items and your final ticket value is unknown.
First - make sure you website profile in GA is set to be an E-Commerce site. To do this, login to your GA account, click Edit next to the website profile in question, then on the next page (Profile Settings), click edit in the upper right corner (on the "Main Website Profile Information" panel). Then look for this radio button and change it and your currency as appropriate:
Second, we'll be diving back into some javascript code as we did in part three, but if you follow along carefully it's not hard. It will, however, require some programmer intervention to get it right as the sale values must be dynamically loaded into the javascript below.
Before we go any further, you need to make sure you're using the latest version of the Google Analytics code on your site. To find and make sure you've got the right code, do the following:
- Load up GA.
- Click edit in the settings column for the website profile in question.
- In the upper right corner of the edit page, click the "Check Status" link (dumb, I know).
- Make sure you grab the "New Tracking Code." This should be the code you have in place throughout your site (not the legacy code).
Next, as we've discussed previously, set up your goal.
Here's an example:
Note I have 0 in the Goal value field, don't worry - we'll be creating that value dynamically in a moment.
Now - on your receipt page, in the code itself, you're going to need to call some javascript to register the sale with GA.
Warning: this is decidedly technical, so if this is mumbo jumbo to you, your programmer will need to help.
On your receipt page, below the GA tracking code, you're going to need to make three javascript function calls.
- pageTracker._addTrans() to register a transaction.
- pageTracker._addItem() to add the item(s) (you can call it multiple times, once for each product purchased).
- pageTracker._trackTrans() to send it all to the mother ship.
The parameters for these functions are outlined in the example below provided by Google. You or your programmer will need to populate in the values for each of those items when the page is rendered. In the event that you don't have (or want to record) a value (like, for shipping) you can put 0, or leave it blank.
That's it! I hope this little tour of the power of goal tracking in Google Analytics has been helpful to you.
<script type="text/javascript">
pageTracker._addTrans(
"1234", // Order ID
"Mountain View", // Affiliation
"11.99", // Total
"1.29", // Tax
"5", // Shipping
"San Jose", // City
"California", // State
"USA" // Country
);
pageTracker._addItem(
"1234", // Order ID
"DD44", // SKU
"T-Shirt", // Product Name
"Green Medium", // Category
"11.99", // Price
"1" // Quantity
);
pageTracker._trackTrans();
</script>Advanced Google Analytics: Conversion Goals (Part Three)
May 29, 2008 in Analytics, Expert AdviceIn part one of this series I covered the basics of setting up goals in GA (Google Analytics).
In part two I covered setting up funnels.
These are both straightforward techniques that everyone should be using because you can do them without ever touching your website (assuming you have the GA code installed on your site, of course).
Today, I'm going to cover a more technically advanced topic. Namely, tracking things that don't have a distinct page view associated with them. This one will require some web page editing know-how, and a little bit of programming savvy, but not a ton if you carefully follow along.
Tracking goals with no distinct associated pageview
Remember that goals are really just a pageview that you've specified as being a goal inside GA. To track a goal without a distinct pageview associated, we're going to simulate a pageview using simple javascript.
First, let's define what we mean.
Here are a couple examples:
Let's say you've got a software download you offer, but visitors just click a download link to get the software. There is no specific pageview, just a link someone clicks to download a file.
Or, you have a registration form that when filled out - doesn't go
to a specific unique page you can enter into GA. Maybe it goes to their
new profile page, but that's not a page that only constitutes
the completion of a goal because this same user (and others) will
return to that same page many times in the future.
Here's how we handle that:
It's simple and brilliant really, you just use a snippet of javascript code (provided by Google) which simulates a pageview.
When the action you desire has taken place (say, they clicked the download software link, or they filled out the form), you use the little javascript call to simulate a pageview.
Let's walk through an example:
First, set up your goal as before. This time pick Exact Match, and
for your Goal URL, you can make it anything you'd like. Start with the
slash, (/) and then use a fairly descriptive name, no spaces. It can be
anything you want. This is the pageview we'll be simulating in a moment. For the Goal name, this is how it'll appear in the report, so put something meaningful. (Only you will see it.)
Define a funnel if you wish, these would be the pages leading up to the goal. Perhaps you have a product screenshot tour, followed by the download link. Put the steps to the tour in the funnel.
Now comes the technical part.
Move the original GA code to the top of the page
First - On the page where the goal happens (from our example above, the page where the software download link is) you're going to need to move the original GA code to the top of the page instead of the bottom (which is where they initially tell you to put it). The safest place to put it is right after the first <body> tag. It must appear before the new snippet we'll be using below to simulate the pageview. If needed, you can do this for every page, not just the ones where the goal happens.
Make the pageview simulation javascript call
Don't get freaked out! This sounds complicated, but it's simple. All you need to do is have the following javascript where your desired action takes place.
pageTracker._trackPageview('/GOALPAGEHERE')
So, for our example above, on the software download link, I'd do the following:
<a href="MySoftware.zip" onclick="pageTracker._trackPageview('/DownloadSoftware')"> Download Software!</a>
The part in red, is the part I added. the "onclick=..." mumbo jumbo says, when someone clicks this link, make this javascript call which simulates a pageview. Note the value I have in the parenthesis and single quotes matches the value I put as the Goal URL above. These values must match.
Ok let's do another one with our second example, someone is filling out a signup form.
Here's how we'd define our goal inside GA.
You have two options with simulating the pageview. You can either trigger it when the form is submitted this way:
Option 1:
Put the part in red in the form tag on your signup form.
<form action="..." method="..." onsubmit="pageTracker._trackPageview('/NewSignUp)">
Option 2:
Or, you can use your backend code to show the following on the profile page, only after a signup happens. I'd put this at the bottom of the page just before the </body> tag:
<script type="text/javascript">
pageTracker._trackPageview('/NewSignUp');
</script>
And that's it!
This tip requires a bit more technical savvy, but if you have a scenario where you need to track a goal without a distinct pageview associated, it's the best way.
Hope this helps.
In our next, and final installment, we'll discuss how to track track the income from certain goals (goal value tracking).
Advanced Google Analytics: Conversion Goals (Part Two)
May 23, 2008 in Analytics, Expert AdviceLast time we discussed the basics of setting up goals in Google Analytics. Something so easy and valuable, everyone should be doing it.
Today we're going to cover funnels.
Funnels
Funnels are optional when setting up goals, but again, it's very valuable information and it's not hard to set up, so why not do it?
A funnel is the series of pages that a visitor passes through to accomplish a goal.
An example: Let's say your goal is for someone to create an account. You might have a promo page, then a two-page signup process, with your goal page being the final "You're now a member!" confirmation page.
Enter the page URLs (without domain) and give each one a name (this name will only appear in your reports). Put the first step at the top.
Like this:
Another common example would be to track an e-commerce conversion. i.e. adding to cart, checkout - shipping, checkout - billing, review order, receipt page (as goal).
Note, the "Required Step" checkbox to the right of Step 1 only impacts the funnel visualization report. If you check that box, then you'll only get a funnel visualization report on conversions that touch that page prior to converting. That said, the conversion will be tracked whether you check it or not. (Useful, for example, if you only wanted to visualize funnels for conversions that came from a certain landing page.)
Why is this valuable?
The key value of tracking funnels is to know how many people start the conversion process, but don't ultimately convert. This can be extremely useful information. With this data, you can examine your pre-conversion process and determine if it's hurting or helping you, and test optimizations to increase your conversion rate. (And the funnel visualization report tells you the abandonment rate for each step of the funnel.)
Once you have your funnels defined, inside your Google Analytics reports, you'll now have two new reports.
1) Abandoned Funnels. Here you'll find your funnel abandonment rate, broken down by month, week, day or even hour.
2) Funnel Visualization. This helps you visualize each step of the funnel process, and what percent of visitors progress from step to step, all the way to your final conversion rate.
Again, I hope this helps motivate you to take better advantage of this wonderful free resource for improving the way you do business on the web.
Advanced Google Analytics: Conversion Goals (Part One)
May 20, 2008 in Analytics, Expert AdviceSo you've signup up for Google Analytics. You've grabbed the code, you've pasted it on every page. You're done, right?
Wrong. You've only tapped a portion of the Google Analytics Goodness. Setting up goals in Google Analytics is very easy, and very powerful. You only need to invest a few minutes to avail yourself of this very valuable additional data.
First, let's define goals:
Goals are desired visitor actions on your website.
For example, here are mine from a current venture:
- Created a profile
- Joined the email list
- Made a purchase
Yours might be things like, submitted a sales inquiry, viewed a key page, started or downloaded a free trial, upgraded their account, referred a friend.
Currently, Google Analytics only allows you to select up to four goals so choose wisely.
How goals work:
Goals are actually just a page view. Really, that's it. When you define a goal in GA, you tell it what page view constitutes the completion of a goal, and GA tracks it as a goal.
For example: let's say you want to track purchases.
You just tell GA to track your Receipt.html/ThankYou.html-type-page and define that goal as "Made a purchase" and as long as you have the GA tracking code snippet on that page, you're done defining that goal.
Let's walk through it:
Step One: Click the "Edit" link on the Google Analytics Website Profiles page.
Step Two: Click the "Edit" link in the "Settings" column for the first goal (i.e. G1).
Step Three: Here's where you want to enter the page, that when viewed, constitutes the completion of a goal. (This part is only a tiny bit tricky, so don't freak out.)
Active Goal: leave it marked "On" or it won't track.
Match Type: This is the tricky part, you or your programmer can read the excellent help to find the appropriate one for how your pages work, but if you're not sure, try Head Match. This allows your URL to have additional values after the page file name (e.g. Receipt.aspx?orderid=123), or not, and still be tracked.
Goal Name: You can put whatever you want here, but put something clear and meaningful so you'll know what you're looking at when you view it in your Google Analytics Goals Dashboard.
Scroll to the bottom of this page, click Save Changes and you're done!
Let a little time pass, then head to the GA dashboard and click the Goals nav item to see how things are going.
Told you it wasn't hard.
Hope that helps motivate you to look closer at goal tracking with GA. It's valuable business intel you'd be crazy not to track.
In future posts we'll cover goal value tracking (track the income from certain goals) as well as funnels, and tracking things that don't have a distinct page view associated with them.
Happy Links: Retirement accounts for the self employed
October 19, 2007 in Expert Advice, Happy Links(For those in the U.S.)
In addition to the faithful ROTH and Traditional IRAs, here's a nice overview of various other retirement options, by Nicole McInerney:
- Simplified Employee Pension IRA (SEP-IRA)
You qualify if you do a Schedule C or F or guaranteed payments from a partnership. You can set one up with the same folks who do ROTH or traditional IRAs, and you can contribute 20% of your net earnings minus self employment tax or $45,000 (for 2007), whichever is less. - The Solo 401K
You qualify only if you have no employees. Finding a broker that offers it might be tricky (try Fidelity or T. Rowe Price), but you can contribute up to $15,500 plus 20% of your business income, with a maximum contribution of $45,000 in 2007. - The Simple IRA - this one is for your employees too.
You can offer it if you have less than 100 employees and you don't have another retirement plan (403(b) or SEP). You can contribute up to $21K for yourself.
- The Keogh
This one is a mess, good grief. But - you can put in up to $180,000 if you structure it right.
And finally - a nice matrix to help you compare, sort it all out and find your best option.
