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.
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