Goals and Funnels are a versatile way to measure how well your site or app fulfills your target objectives. You can set up individual Goals to track discrete actions, like transactions with a minimum purchase amount or the amount of time spent on a screen. A Funnel lets you specify a path you expect traffic to take to reach a Goal. Combing Goals and Funnels helps you analyze how well your site or app directs people towards your target.
Each time a user completes a Goal, a conversion is logged in your Google Analytics account. If you set a monetary value for a Goal, you can also see the value of conversions. You can see the Goal conversions rates (i.e., the Goal completion rates) in the Goal Reports. You can also analyze Goals conversions in in other reports, including the Visitor Report, Traffic Reports, Site Search Reports, and the Events Reports.
Types of Goals
Refer to this section for help if necessary when you set up Goals
There are four different objectives you can choose for a Goal. When a visitor performs the action you chose, a conversion is triggered and recorded in your Goal Reports. You can select the type you want to track from a list when you set up Goals in your account:
- URL Destination: A specific location, like a web page (or virtual page) or an app screen, has loaded. For example, a Thank you for registering! web page or app screen may be a destination for an ecommerce lead generation campaign. This Goal works well combined with Funnels (see below).
- Visit Duration: Visits that lasts a specific amount of time or longer. You could use this Goal to determine how many visitors stay longer than two minutes on a shopping page or screen.
- Page/Visit (for web) Screens/Visit (for apps): A visitor views a specific number of pages or screens in a visit. Use this type of goal when you want to track the visitors that view a minimum of 3 pages, for example.
- Event: A visitor triggers an action you’ve defined as an Event, like a social recommendation or an ad click. In order to set this kind of goal, you must first set up Event Tracking.
Goal sets: Organizing Goals in your account
Goals are automatically grouped in sets, though you determine which Goals belong in each set. These sets appear in your reports as links beneath the Explorer tab in many reports. Use sets to categorize the different types of Goals for your site. For example, you might track downloads, registrations, and receipt pages in separate Goal sets. The Analytics blog post from June 14, 2012 has a great example of how to organize Goal sets.
Goals are set at the profile level, and are limited to 20 Goals per profile. Each profile can have four sets of Goals, and each set can have a maximum of five Goals. To track more than 20 goals for a website or app, set up a new profile for that property.
Goal Values
Refer to this section for help if necessary when you set up Goals
When you set up a Goal, you have the option of assigning a dollar amount to the conversion. Each time the Goal is completed, this number is recorded. All instances of this number are then added together and reported as the Goal Value.
Every action a visitor takes on your web site or app can be translated into a dollar amount. One way to help determine what a Goal value should be, is to evaluate how often the visitors who complete the Goal become customers. For example, if your sales team can close 10% of people who sign up for a newsletter, and your average transaction is $500, you might assign $50 (i.e. 10% of $500) to your Newsletter sign-up Goal - a Goal visitors complete when they reach the final sign-up page. In contrast, if only 1% of signups result in a sale, you might only assign $5 to your Newsletter sign-up Goal.
Although assigning a Goal Value is optional when setting up Goals, we strongly recommend you use it to help monetize evaluate all visitor interactions with your site. Note that Google Analytics also uses the Goal Value data to calculate other metrics like ROI and Average Score.
Goal Funnels
Refer to this section for help if necessary when you set up Goals
A Funnel lets you specify a path you expect traffic to take to reach a Destination Goal. When you specify steps in a Funnel, Analytics can the track where visitors enter and exit the path on the way towards your Goal, giving you valuable insight about your site. You may see, for example, a page in a Funnel from which a lot of traffic exits before completing the Goal - indicating a problem with that page. If you see a lot of traffic skipping steps, you discover that site navigation or a certain path to conversion is too long or contains extraneous steps.
Funnels can only be used with Destination Goals. The last page in the sequence is your Goal page (entered as Goal Destination), while the preceding pages make up the Funnel steps. For lead-generation Goal Funnels, you could assign the first page of the funnel as the URL of the contact request form and the goal page as the URL for a Thanks for your request page that appears after the user submits a contact request.
You can view Funnel activity in the Goal Flow Visualization and in the Funnel Visualization report.
More Info
- Set Up Goals
- Goals for URLs and Ecommerce (for web properties)
- Special-case Goals and Funnels (for web properties)
- Mobile App Outcomes: Goals and Ecommerce Reports(for app properties)
- Driving Conversions (video series)
Once you have set up Goals with Values, or if you are using Goal in conjunction with Ecommerce Tracking, you might also want to explore Multi-Channel Funnels.