Understanding Google Goals, Filters, and Funnels

Before I begin to analyze Google goals, funnels, and filters, I would like to share this video I stumbled across through my research. If you are new to the Google Analytics game like me, you will appreciate how Google explains the concepts of goals, funnels, and filters. Because let’s face it. Rarely do retail sites have a one stop landing page. This is why using filters and funnels are important. They take the web user through a process to get to the ultimate destination.

Google Goals

Google Analytics goals can be defined as a means to measure business objectives, reports and improve on them.  Goals are essential for any business to function. Types of goals differ from business to business depending on the industry. Since we live in a technology centered society, nearly any business of any type can benefit from using Google Goals. Within Google Analytics, users have the ability to setup a specific action orinteraction that can be used to calculate the flow of users within the site. Google Analytics makes setting up these goals pretty simple. First off, when thinking of what final outcome you would like to accomplish, refer to the most common set of goals for E-commerce:

• Did the visitor search for something?
• Did they add it to their cart?
• Did they buy it?

Avinash Kaushik (2010) suggests you break goals into two types, Macro and Micro conversions, allowing the understanding on priority of the goals. Keep in mind that not every business’s site has a shopping cart, so one must think strategically on how to utilize Google Goals to meet the needs of their consumer. An example of the non- retail website could be a travel advice site. The travel agency may come up with a goal of getting users to use a tool, like a quick search feature. Other questions one might ask when determining what their goals should be include:

• What information is most important for you to track? Is this just for knowledge, or for potential changes of how your website flows?
• What are you expecting your visitors to do once they reach your website?
• What is considered “successful” to you? Completing a purchase, long periods viewing your site, newsletter sign-ups, 10+ total page views, etc?
• Could you change anything in your design to influence visitors towards completing these goals faster/easier?

When it comes to setting up Google Goals, there are endless amounts of combinations. A few key goals that beginning businesses should make sure to have are: tracking new account openings, tracking sales, and tracking comments. 

Tracking new account openings are crucial to keeping loyal customers. It is great that a user wants to give their information to a company and create that customer tie, but if the process is difficult then the chances of any memberships are doomed. Companies can use the tracking of new account openings to analyze the success of the initial information form (is it too long or is the captcha too difficult?).

Though tracking sales is an end goal, it is important because it demonstrates if the shopping process was a success. It might be difficult, but Ran Nir (2009) advises to include every step a user might take to better understand where to improve.

Tracking comments is mostly used on blogs or customer reviews. This goal helps determine what content is good and what content is bad. Like any social site, engagement tracking is key. Similarly to tracking new accounts, businesses can use the track comments feature to ensure that users are not encountering any technical problems that will hinder them from joining in on the conversation.

Google Funnels

Adding funnels will provide much more purpose if your goals require a set of intended paths. You can setup funnels or just a single step funnel which Google Analytics can use to create a goal. The key is to understand what users having been doing, in what order and trying to get an understanding on the value generated to the business of their visit..

If using a pay per click campaign, funnels are extremely helpful. After setting up Google Analytics Funnels within the pay per click campaign, you can use the information gathered about customer behavior so that the necessary changes are made to increase the success of the campaign. These changes will also increase the conversion rate and keep potential clients in the conversion process until the very last step.

Google Filters

Filters are applied to the information coming into your account, to manipulate the final data in order to provide accurate reports (P.I. Reed, Successful Approaches in Google Analytics, p. 1).  Choosing what filters to use depends on the site that is operating. For example, a college university web site may want to know what demographic is viewing their site that is not on campus students. These could be future students searching for specific programs, clubs, or an application.  In order for the university to track what non students are visiting their site, they would need to set up a filter that excludes a specific list of IP addresses.  To get even more specific, the university could also set up a country/region filter. This kind of filter would allow them to view where future students are currently living. Knowing this information could lead to a stronger marketing focus toward the most popular geographic location which could result in a higher attendance rate. 

A more advanced filter that I prefer to use on my personal site is the Full Refferal URL filter. This filter expands on the exact page on what site referred a user to your website. Though it’s nice knowing your top referral sites (Facebook.com, Blogger.com, etc.), pinpointing the exact page that links your site with a partnering site says something about where your demographic is spending their time and what element might have drawn them to visiting your site.

Conclusion

Though the terms funnels and filters may get confusing, it is important to be able to distinguish the difference of their functions because there is so much information that they bring to the table. Whether you are using funnels and filters to view what content is working or to track glitches in your web site, their purpose is to help.  

Taking Action with Google Analytics

There are several reports and metrics from Google Analytics that have helped me get a better idea as to what content goes onto my website and how it is presented. Below are a few of my preferred reports that have helped me alter areas around my site. Keep in mind that I have only just begun experimenting with the tools Google Analytics has to offer. This report only skims the surface of a vast ocean of information.

Unique Visits

It is interesting to see the amount of unique visits versus returning visitors. Google defines Unique Visitors as a cookie or a piece of data. This means that for every time a visitor visits a site Google Analytics checks for the cookie. If the cookie exists then GA knows the visitor has been to the site before. If the cookie does not exist GA sets the cookie and increases the unique visitor count. Since the majority of traffic consists of unique visitors outnumbering returning visitors, it is possible that this can be a processing issue. Or these results show that the reason returning visitors are so low in comparison is because of lack of advertising, word of mouth referrals, or lack of content.

Traffic Sources – Referral

Evaluating a website’s referral pages is easily done and essential to knowing what sources are giving your site traffic. GA shows a list of traffic referrers ranking them by most frequent visits. This data can be interpreted that tagged key words and photos linked to Google images are drawing new users to the site. Knowing where your traffic came from gives you an idea of where your target audience spends their free time. 

For example, my top referrer is Facebook. This makes sense because of I am broadcasting updates to a large audience who I have personal connections with. Seeing that the Facebook audience has visited my blog tells me that they are information seekers who like to learn through social activity. They did not search out the site, it was there waiting for them on their newsfeed.

Traffic Sources – Social Network Referrals

By examining the amount of visits from a social network, one can determine the interest level of the audience. If content is presented differently depending on the social networking platform, the amount of success from each network can determine if the company is using the channel to its maximum potential.

Jonathan Mumm of Banyan Branch Social says that tracking social network activity can be quite the challenge through Google Analytics because Google Analytics treats links clicked from Twitter and Facebook like a normal referral link source and URL shorteners appear as “Direct/None” traffic.  Mumm continues to recommend that using Segments can help improve the tracking of social media while still using Google Analytics. The benefits of using Segments are that Segments do not change any of your incoming data and they are easy to create and modify at any time. Segments allow for the analysis of historical data. One important factor to keep in mind is that Segments do not pull in any additional data, they use what Google Analytics already has and presents it in a different format.

Another method to track social media activity is using a custom campaign tag to the links shared on social networking sites. These campaign tags allow for Google Analytics to increase insights as to how well various social networking site presences are working for the campaign. GA offers users a custom URL builder, which allows for the creation of links for each of the assigned campaign.

Once the campaign tags are set, Google Analytics then give more information based on how people use your customized links. By knowing how the links are being used, one can gain And gain a better understanding of referral traffic and adjust the social media marketing for ideal results..

Traffic Sources – Keywords

Through analyzing the set of key words or phrases searched by users, one can gather what topics are of interest to the target audience. This metric can help businesses determine what key phrases to use in search engine optimization campaigns, like Google Adwords.

Behavior - Frequency and Recency

Marketing consultant Andrew Edwards says “Frequency and Recency are important because this is how you begin to understand how “interesting” your site is to the folks who visit." While the difference between Frequency and Recency can be confusing, David Crankshaw has helped me understand it better saying, “The Recency report measures the time between a visit and the immediate prior visit.  The Recency report does not distinguish between visitors who came to your site many times and those who came by fewer times. That’s the job of the Frequency report”.

Upon analyzing the Frequency and Recency report on my site, it can be seen that the users’ activity is more frequent and they do not wait long before returning to the site. This tells me that I should update content more frequently in order to increase engagement levels.

Demographic – Location – City

Knowing where your audience lives can aid any business or individual with targeting their website or altering its content. Google Analytics shows a list of cities that reveals the site’s demographic. The city that visits my site the most is Morgantown. My reasoning behind why this is the highest number is because I have posted about local Morgantown businesses and several of my followers on social media platforms currently live in Morgantown.  

To conclude, Google Analytics offers a wealth of information for potentially any type of business. It is always a good idea for businesses to listen in on what their consumers are saying and doing in order to improve upon their business practice. The combined use of tools and report ultimately depends on the specific goals of the company.

Key Words Are Crucial

(via webseoanalytics.com)

Using Google AdWords and Facebook Ads are two ways to appeal to a mass market. Though both services are useful, each serves a specific purpose that differs from one another. Three Ships Media describes AdWords as “The Library” and Facebook Ads as “The Party”. A consumer may genuinely want all kinds of information on a product and Google AdWords provides them with just that. Facebook Ads encourage engagement whether it is on the company’s Facebook page or official website. Companies using Facebook tend to focus on the engagement element leading consumers to a purchase.

To begin a fair analysis and description of each tool, I will start by taking a look at where the ads are placed from the viewer’s perspective.

Determining Goals: Content Vs. Conversation

( via acidlabs.org )

Before deciding the type of content a site should display, it is essential for companies to listen to the conversations of their target audience. Listening to the voices of the consumer will help generate the appropriate content to set a website apart from its competitors. While engaging in conversations with consumers is important for a company’s personal voice, it can only do so much without persuasive content. Blogger Nathan Pieratt says “Effective content has energy. It has passion and an agenda to spur a response from the reader. It is the energy behind the message that is important because it will drive consumer engagement and that creates a more personal experience with the reader”.