Goals in Google Analytics

The changes Google have made to the way goals work in Analytics could add a lot to your understanding of your site and the way it works for your customers.

Goals are very important in web analytics. The basic purpose of analytics is to help you identify which parts of your site are working, and which aren't. How you define 'working' is where goals come in.

On an e-commerce site, it's tempting to conclude that the site is working if people are buying your products. Actual monetary transactions like these should always be tracked in the e-commerce section of GA. But there's more to your business than just selling, right? You want customers to engage with your site, and build up some sort of relationship with it, so that - for example - you can be confident that a new and cheaper competitor will have a hard time pulling the rug from under you.

That's why the new types of goals just introduced in Google Analytics are so useful. As well as goals that involve hitting a certain page (like a newsletter signup), you can now set up goals that require the user to spend a certain amount of time on the site, or to view a certain number of pages.

Goals like this, that measure engagement rather than just a particular action, are exactly what the goals section of GA has always been useful for - and this new functionality will allow us all to get a much truer and more comprehensive understanding of our users' behaviour.

If you want to take advantage of the new goal types - as well as Analytics Intelligence, Multiple Custom Variables, or any of the other new features recently added to Google Analytics - get in touch through our website, and we'll get straight back to you.