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Google Analytics 101 – Funnels

This is the second part in our Google Analytics 101 series. This introductory series will help novice Google Analytics users learn how to set up and view goals, funnels and flows.

Intro to Google Analytics Funnels

When setting up a URL destination goal in Google Analytics, you have the option to create a funnel. A funnel is a series of pages you expect your site visitor  to visit before completing your goal.

By creating a funnel, you can analyze problems that may occur before a user reaches the goal. For example, you can see where visitors are departing the site in the course of your shopping cart checkout process.

Let’s say you have a checkout path that looks like this:

* Step 1:  /viewcart.html

* Step 2: /register.html

* Step 3:  /shipping.html

* Step 4:  /checkout.html

* Goal/Success page:   /thankyou.html

Here are the steps you would take to create a funnel for this checkout process:

1. Create a URL destination goal (see Goals 101 ), using the page a user sees after they purchase an item.  For this example, this it the “/thankyou.html” page.
2. Turn the funnel option on.
3. Enter the URLs along a path to goal completion that you would like to include in this funnel.  You can give each URL a descriptive name which will appear in goal funnel reports. Do not include the final Goal URL as that was entered in as the destination goal previously. There is an option to make each step Required. In most cases this is not needed. If you choose to make a step not required, then visitors can bypass this page and will still be measured as completing the funnel.
4. Click “Verify this Goal” which will help you identify if the goal is set up correctly. If there is no data, then you may have a typo in your URL.
5. Click “Create Goal”

Funnels are not applied retroactively, so you will need to wait until Google Analytics compiles data to view funnel reports in in Google Analytics.

With the funnel set up and data flowing, you now have access to basic funnel reporting:

• In the Goals dashboard, you can access the “Funnel Visualization” report. This report shows each step you created. In each step, you can see who entered and exited at each step, and how many users from the previous step made it into the next step.

We hope you have found this basic introduction to Google Analytics funnels helpful! Next in this series, we will go over the basics of Google Analytics Flow report.

 

Google Analytics 101: Setting up Goals

This is the first part in our Google Analytics 101 series. This introductory series will help novice Google Analytics users learn how to set up and view goals, funnels and flows.

Google Analytics: Intro to Goals

Goals help you measure actions or objectives on your site. When setting up a goal in Google Analytics, you have four measurement types to choose from:

• Destination – example: thanks.html
• Duration – example: 5 minutes or more
• Pages Per Visit – example: 3 pages
• Event – example: played a video

The most basic type of goal you may wish to create are visits to a success page, typically the “thank you” or “confirmation” page on which a user arrives after submitting a form or purchasing an item in your store.

To begin setting up your Goals, log into Google Analytics, access the Admin section of the profile you wish to create a goal in, and under the Goals tab, select “Create a Goal.”

Here is the Create a Goal process step-by-step:

1. Name your Goal
2. Select the Type of Goal. We’ll use “Destination” in this example
3. You now have three destination URL types — “Equals to”, “Begins with” and “Regular Expression.” If you just want to measure visits to a page called “/thankyou.html,” select “Equals to”. If you want to measure “thankyou.html” in addition to “thankyou.html?id-1xyz” select “Begins with.” The regular expression feature offers you more advanced options, for example, measuring multiple pages.
4. There is no need to assign a Value or Funnel, so leave those two features off.
5. Click “Verify this Goal” which will help you identify if the goal is set up correctly. If there is no data, then you may have a typo in your URL.
6. Click “Create Goal”

Goals are not applied retroactively, so you will need to wait until Google Analytics compiles some new data to see Goal data in Google Analytics.

With your Goal set up and data flowing, you now have access to basic Goal reporting:

• Navigate to the Goals dashboard in Google Analytics to see the number of goal completions and the conversion rates based on site traffic.
• Goal conversion data also appears in other reports in Google Analytics, including Visitor Report, Traffic Reports, Site Search Reports, and the Events Reports. For example, looking Organic keyword data you can see a goal conversion rate for each referring keyword.

 

We hope this has provided a helpful introduction to setting up Google Analytics Goals! Next in this series, we will go over the basics of Google Analytics Funnels report.