Do You Have Goals?

“People with goals succeed because they know where they’re going.”

These wise words were spoken by writer and radio legend Earl Nightingale. While they may seem fitting for a teacher’s pep talk, they also apply to websites. You may not realize that websites are often designed not just to inform, but to lead the user toward specific goals, such as making a purchase, filling out a form, viewing a video, downloading a document, clicking a social media share button, or viewing a specified number of Web pages.

With its robust data collection and reporting capabilities, Google Analytics allows a marketer to filter out unwanted data, define website Goals, track achievement of these Goals, and see the path users took on their way to completing them. Armed with the resulting data, she can then strategize to increase Goal completions. Read on to learn about how I used Filters, Goals and Funnels with my blog, and how they can be helpful to businesses, too.

Filters

Filters allow a marketer to look at a subset of data by including or excluding data based on its place of origin. For example, one may not want to include visits from a specified domain, IP address or geographic area. If a marketer wants to focus on a particular section of a website, Filters can also be used to narrow a report to include data only for specified pages. “Filters are similar to the gold rush days of panning. They eliminate dirt and debris until all you’re left with is gold, or in this case more accurate results” (Four Google, 2010, “You Said”).

On my blog, I used the Filter function to exclude traffic from my own IP address, so that my visits to the site are not included in the data. Although the drop in numbers was a blow to my ego, my data is now a more correct representation of my readers and their behavior on my site. Filtering internal traffic is especially important for larger companies. For example, at my day job at a commercial real estate firm, many of my approximately 125 colleagues visit our website daily. Combining their browsing activity with that of our prospective clients would skew the reporting significantly, as the two groups likely have very different goals when visiting the site.

Goals

A major objectives for my blog is for people to read my content. As this activity takes time, the first Goal I created was a visit duration of at least 45 seconds. If someone spends this amount of time on my blog, there is a good chance they are doing some reading. Of course, there is also the chance that a visitor opened the site, left it open while answering a phone call and then returned to it a few minutes later only to close the site without having read very much at all. This example shows that, while visit duration can be informative, it does not prove that a visitor is engaged with a site. Since setting up this Goal, I have had 21 visitors, 10 of whom reached the visit duration Goal (Figure 1).

The second Goal I set was the viewing of at least three pages in one session. Previously, my home page showed three full blog entries, making it impossible to determine how many entries a visitor read. I recently reorganized it, however, to show just the first paragraph of each post followed by a “read more” hyperlink, making it easier to correlate clicks with the reading of posts. The viewing of three pages would typically indicate a visit to my home page plus at least two blog posts, suggesting (although not proving) some interest by the user. As with my first Goal, 10 of my 21 visitors completed this Goal (Figure 2). (Given that it takes more time to look at more pages, it is likely that both Goals were completed by the same 10 people.)

According to professional blogger Kristi Hines (2012), Goals provide “the most actionable metrics on your website” because they allow you “to discover more about your most treasured people – those that are completing goals and conversions on your website” (para. 12). By looking at the Source report within the Goals section, I learned that my most valuable readers are referred by Facebook (Figure 3), suggesting that my outreach on that channel is working and that I should consider promoting my blog there more heavily. Similarly, a business could use this report to determine where it is receiving the most return on its investment of time and/or marketing dollars. For example, a paid ad might be driving a lot of traffic to the site, but would not be worth the expense if those referred by the ad were not taking the desired action. Likewise, an ad that refers only a small amount of traffic could be valuable if a large percentage of those visitors completed a Goal.

I also discovered that my most valuable readers are geographically diverse (Figure 4). While a few are from Massachusetts, my home state, others are from as far as Florida and Washington. A company that has just launched a campaign might use this report to determine whether it is receiving the desired response from a targeted region, and a new business could use it to get an initial picture of the geographic areas that hold potential.

Wish List Goals

More than wanting people to read my content, I want them to engage with it. To measure engagement, I would have liked to collect data on blog subscriptions and comments. Unfortunately, I am still in the process of figuring out how to insert the tracking code necessary to create Google Analytics goals for these two areas; however, I wanted to address how such data could be useful.

By subscribing to a blog, a user indicates that she wants to read future posts. By commenting, she acknowledges that she read the content and thought about it. These visitors are engaged! For a casual blogger like me, these actions make me feel good about providing content that is valuable to others. For a business, however, they provide opportunities for further communication with a current or potential customer. Google Analytics can tell where these engaged readers came from, what devices they used to visit the site, whether they were first-time visitors, how often the returning visitors view the site, and more.

The data can also provide actionable feedback for content. For example, the number of comments on different posts can show a blogger which topics are most interesting to readers. For an online newspaper, comments can increase the value and shelf life of an article. Professor Paul Grabowicz (2012, para. 3) says comments “are a way of engaging people in a conversation about the news and recognizing that a story does not end with its publication, but rather is a starting point for generating commentary and contributions by the public.” A low number of comments may prompt an editor to evaluate a particular author or subject, looking for deficiencies.

Funnels

According to Google Analytics (n.d., para. 1), “a Funnel lets you specify a path you expect traffic to take to reach a Goal.” My blog is not the ideal platform to demonstrate Funnels, as I do not expect visitors to view pages in a specific sequence for any purpose. Funnels can be very helpful, however, for e-commerce or lead generation websites.

The image to the left shows the steps typically taken to complete an online purchase. The e-retailer hopes that once a customer enters the Funnel, which, in this example, begins with placing an item in the shopping cart, she will continue all the way through a pre-determined path to Goal completion. Some people, however, exit the Funnel somewhere along the way, representing a lost (or at least delayed) sale.

By creating a Funnel in Google Analytics, a marketer can see where people are getting off path, gaining insight into pages that could potentially be improved to make it easier or more compelling for the user to stay in the Funnel. Then, the real work begins—testing variations that could result in a higher number of Goal completions.

A marketer might experiment with the point at which to offer the total price or shipping costs; when to ask for credit card information; and the number of different pages required to complete the Funnel. Neil Patel (2012), vice president of Marketing of KISSmetrics, suggests also testing different calls to action, Captcha-like features and money back guarantees.

Can you think of non-purchase Funnels that you may have experienced as a website user?

References

Four Google. (2010, Nov. 29). Four Google Analytics Filters You Should Be Using. Retrieved December 1, 2012 from http://www.nurelm.com/themanual/2010/11/29/four-google-analytics-filters-you-should-be-using/

Google Analytics. (n.a.). About goals. Retrieved December 1, 2012 from http://support.google.com/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1012040

Grabowicz, P. (2012, Nov. 25). The transition to digital journalism. Retrieved December 1, 2012 from http://multimedia.journalism.berkeley.edu/tutorials/digital-transform/comments-on-news-stories/

Hines, K. (2012). How to get actionable data out of Google Analytics [Weblog post]. Retrieved December 1, 2012 from http://blog.kissmetrics.com/actionable-google-analytics/

Patel, N. (2012). A Straight-Forward Guide to Optimizing Your Funnels for Maximum Conversions [Weblog post]. Retrieved December 1, 2012 from http://blog.kissmetrics.com/guide-to-optimizing-funnels/