Which Goals Are Available in Google Analytics?

Whatever your industry - healthcare, automotive, travel, or beyond - Analytics can help you get a better understanding of your client behaviour and will help improve your ROI. Surprisingly, many websites with Google Analytics installed don’t have their Goals set up. 

In this article, we'll take you through the goals available in Google Analytics and how to use them. We’re excited to share with you everything you need to know about GA Goals and to improve your online business with data-driven decisions. Let’s get started!

First, What are Google Analytics Goals?

Goals in Google Analytics help you track the different actions performed by users on your website. These actions include visiting a page, submitting a form, buying a product, etc. They also measure the conversion rates of certain goals you set in place. 

Tracking website goals that are aligned with your business goals can help you understand your marketing effectiveness and profitability.

This means, before you can determine the effectiveness of your goals, you first have to determine the kind of actions you want your website visitors to make. Do you want them to make a purchase? To watch a video? Or perhaps to request a quote?

These goals are trackable in Analytics. Just click the “Admin” tab. In the View column, click “Goals.” They can be applied to know how many pages users view in a session, the specific pages they visit, or the events they trigger while on your website. Read on to know which goals are available in Google Analytics.

Where to Find Google Analytics Goals (Setting Up Your Goals)

1. Go to Google Analytics standard reports

2. In the top right portion, click the “Admin” button

3. Click on “Goals”

4. To set your Goal sets, click “+ New Goal” or Import from Gallery so you can create a new goal. You can also click on an existing goal and simply edit its configuration.

The Three Basic Options for Creating Goals in Google Analytics

• Creating Custom Goals
• Creating Smart Goals
• Using a Goal template

If you choose option 3. That is, using a Goal template, just select a template from the list and click “Next Step” so you continue setting up your goal. The templates available in Google analytics will help you set actionable goals that follow the standard business objectives. Before saving one goal, you can edit any template field, such as Engagement, Inquiry, Acquisition, or Revenue.

Here’s a complete breakdown of the Google Analytics goals you want to build so you can start tracking the metrics that will lead to the success of your business!

5 Google Analytics Goal Types That Are Important To Your Business

1. Destination Goals

Destination goals allow you to track users whenever they land on a specific page on your website. Simply enter the URL of any page as your goal and GA will track it as a conversion whenever someone visits that page! Simple, isn’t it?

But, how is this destination goal useful for you? Well, this is perfect for tracking how many visitors land on your order confirmation pages, thank you pages, or add-to-cart pages, to name a few. 

For example, you have a Thank You page on your website. This is the page that a visitor sees after they signed up for your email newsletter. If you set up a destination goal for this URL, you can see the number of people who have subscribed to your newsletter by simply counting the page views. 

Setting the Destination Goal

As you set up the destination goal, there are different settings you can change. First, match the URL type and select from the following:

• Begins with - If you have more than one page to track, then use Begins with to track all your links. This is also best to use if you have set up custom URLs with UTM tags or codes for your campaigns.
• Equals to - If you have a specific page to track, then you can select Equals to then add the web address (www.example.com/order-completed  or /order-completed, for tracking.
• Regular expression - This provides more flexibility when it comes to defining URLs and is ideal if you want to specify segments, filters, UTM codes, subdomains, and more by yourself.

Case Sensitive

If uppercase or lowercase characters in your URL go to more than one page, make sure to check the case-sensitive box. Usually, it is best to leave this box unchecked.

Goal Funnels

In URL Destination Goals, this part is useful as it allows you to see how many people move through every step of the marketing process. You will know which page needs fixing, how many people abandon the funnel at a certain step, and many more.

A funnel is a series of web pages that lead up to the goal destination. For instance, it may include steps in your eCommerce website’s checkout process that lead to the Thank You page (or goal). But be careful with goal funnels. That’s because they only work when you need your visitors to move through a series of web pages.

Keep in mind that visitors seldom follow a clear path when visiting a website. So, creating a goal funnel may not help your business make sense of how visitors are moving from one page to another. Also, Google Analytics tracks visitors in the funnel by default even if people jump into the middle.

There you go! Once you have selected the URL match for your destination goal, you may also assign a monetary value for conversion. You can do that in the Value option. This is best for eCommerce websites so it’s easy to track purchases.

Once you verified a destination goal and are satisfied with all the settings, click the “Save” button.

2. Duration Goals

Duration goals allow you to determine how much time visitors are spending on your website. These goals are useful if you want to track user engagement. For instance, you can see how many users actually stay on the site for more than a few minutes, engage in various activities, and read your content.

When setting your duration goal, you can be more specific by setting the exact time limit you want to track. However, if you’re not sure how many hours, minutes, or seconds you should set the duration goals at, then just look at the average time each person spends on a website. Then, choose a realistic duration or time limit for your own site. 

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3. Visit Goals/ Pages Per Session

Visit goals or Pages per Visit is a simple goal to set up in Google Analytics. It tracks the number of pages each person navigates before leaving. Just like the Duration goals, this is great for tracking user engagement and knowing the sections in your website that may need improvements.

Under the Goal slot ID section in Google Analytics, you’ll see Pages/Screens per session. Click that link and you can specify how many screens or pages users should view before it will be counted as a conversion. For example, you put greater than five pages or screens per session as your Visit goal to track the highly engaged users. And as a result, you can have a personal and meaningful conversation with your customers because you understand better what your customers or potential customers need.

Now, are you ready to learn about the last Goal available in Google Analytics? 

4. Event Goals

Event goals allow website owners like you to track the different actions visitors performed on your site. Google Analytics events are useful if you want to know the number of people who filled out a form, downloaded a file, or played a video, for example.

These actions are not automatically tracked if you have not set them up in Google Analytics Goals, which is why you need to create them. To see your Events reports, simply sign in to Google analytics, Navigate to your view, open the Reports, and Select Behavior, then Events.

Typically, you will set an action parameter to name the type of interaction or event you want to measure for a certain web object. For instance, a single “Videos” category can analyze specific events with this parameter:

• “Pause” button clicks
• “Play” button clicks
• “Stop” button clicks

As to the name you provide for the action, it will be completely up to you. Just keep in mind that all actions are independently listed from their parent categories and that a unique event is determined by a specific action name. While you can duplicate action names in categories, it could affect how unique these events are calculated by Google Analytics. Visit the Google Support page if you want to get free Google Analytics tips and resources.

If you’re using the WordPress platform for your website, you may want to also use the best WordPress Analytics plugin so you can add the GA without hiring a developer or editing code on your own. Some of your options are HubSpot, GA Google Analytics, Google Analytics WD, and Clicky Analytics, to name a few.

5. Inquiry Goals

Inquiry goals track actions performed by visitors that show interest in learning more about your product, service, or your business as a whole. These actions include viewing your email, phone number, and other contact information.

You may set this Goal up to track someone reading reviews about your business, using live chat (if enabled on your website), requesting a service, and more! For service-based and B2B businesses, Inquiry goals are important because their potential clients can’t make purchases directly on the website. That is why contacting these businesses for more information will be the closest opportunity they can get to earn a paying customer.

Takeaway

Google Analytics is a useful tool that you can use to analyze your business’ data and determine if your marketing budget is well-spent.

Plus, setting up important Google Analytics Goals is a simple process. With the Google Analytics Goal types we shared above, we hope you can start setting them up to better appreciate their impact on your marketing campaigns and online business.

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For a comprehensive guide to setting up GA4, check out this tutorial from ClickMinded.