By Elizabeth Michael
If one of the templates helps you measure your business objectives, then you can set up your goal from a template. Here is how you set up a “Custom” goal.
Click the “Custom” button.
We will go through setting up a custom goal that measures a destination, like filling out an email inquiry form and upon completion, landing on a specific URL (www.yourwebsite.com/thankyou/ with the “/thankyou/” being the important part).
Type the last part of your URL, “/thankyou/” into the destination field and in the drop down menu to the left, select “equals to.” You can assign arbitrary dollar amounts to goal completions. Here, I have said that getting an email is worth fifty cents to me. Then click “Create Goal.”
Once you have created your goal, it will start to track and report your goal completion rates. Above, you can see two established goals and their results. You can view this by clicking on the “Reporting” tab and on the left hand menu, click on “Conversions” and then “Goals” and “Overview.”
And, there you have it! You can now set up Google Analytics and Goals for your blog. I hope this saves you time measuring your success and reporting. If you have any questions, you can contact me on Twitter – @lizzymichael.
After you are sure you are up and running, you should go ahead and make three views: the master, sandbox, and unfiltered. The master is what you will look at every day and has all of the customization built in. The sandbox is where you will test the customization before you implement in the master. The unfiltered view is your fail-safe. This is your back up that you have not messed with at all. There is no going back once you have made changes in Google Analytics, so it is best to make these three views so you never ruin your data sets.
From the admin panel, click the drop down menu under “view.” Then, click “Create new view.”
Name your new view and then click “Create View.” Repeat this process until you have established all of the views you want.
From the drop down menu, choose the view in which you wish to view your data.
Now that you have Google Analytics working on your blog and have set up the different views of data, lets move forward with implementing some goals that will help you measure you business objectives.
Google Goals track user actions and answer questions like “how often do they start the action?” and “do they complete the action?” You will want to set up your goal in the sandbox view first to test and make sure it is working properly. Once you know it is good to go, then implement in your master. Leave the unfiltered version untouched.
To set up a goal, first click on the “Admin” tab and then click on “Goals.”
Google Analytics is a powerful and easy-to-use tool that tracks your website traffic. Google Analytics presents aggregated sets of data that can help you make business decisions.
Bloggers can use Google Analytics and Goals to help measure successful content, important traffic patterns, flaws in the user’s experience, and much more.
Google Analytics is extremely to use; however, there are a few strategic decisions you must make before jumping right in.
The Cycle of Success outlines a process that acts as a roadmap to your success as a blogger. The inner circle represents the process that Google recommends that you follow when setting up their analytics tracking on your site. You start with defining and setting your business goals. Your goals should be straightforward and realistic. What do you wish to accomplish with your website? Generate revenue? Page views? Information downloads? Defining your business goals will set the foundation for your measurement plan, the second step in the Cycle of Success.
Above is an example measurement plan. The steps to make a measurement plan do not change. You can see an example a blogger may write on the right. Here is a blank plan for you to try:
The third step is more technical in nature and nine times out of 10 you will have everything you need to implement Google Analytics and Google Goals. Your technical infrastructure is your computer, software, etc. Basically, it is all of the physical tools you will need to implement your plan.
Creating your implementation plan will guide you through the implementation process, prioritizing what needs to get implemented first, and so on. For a simple blog, you will not have any complicated customization to implement.
How-to implement Google Analytics:
First, you will need to set up your account. Then, you will need to get your code. Finally, you pick and install a plug-in for you blog. Yoast seems to be very popular, but there are lots of options out there.
Once you are logged in to your Google Analytics account, click “Admin” and then “Create New Account.”
Click “Website” if you are tracking traffic on a website, or “Mobile App” if you are tracking an app.
Click “Get Tracking ID.” This gives you the code you will enter into your plug-in. Now, make sure your plug-in is correctly installed on your blog. Go to the plug-in settings and copy and paste your tracking ID into the appropriate field. Depending on which plug-in you choose, the steps may change; however, they should be simple enough to follow along and get your tracking installed correctly. To test and make sure that you are up and running, access your website from another device. Go to your Google Analytics dashboard and on the left hand side, click “Real-time.” You will see all of the users currently on your website.
#AWBU 2014 Google Analytics Part 2 – Scheduled for Oct. 29, 2014
#AWBU 2014 Google Analytics Part 3 – Scheduled for Nov. 1, 2014
