Before you can increase conversion rates, you have to have some idea of what your conversion rate is. Google has three incredibly helpful and FREE tools to make this even easier — Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools and Google Website Optimizer.
In part one of this three part series, I’ll show you how to set up conversion goals with Google Analytics. In part two, we’ll look at how Webmaster Tools plays a crucial role in making sure Google sees your site the way you want it to, and in part three, we’ll take a closer look at how using Website Optimizer can get you on the fast track to increasing your conversions by leaps and bounds.
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Clik here to view.What Exactly is Google Analytics – And Why Do I Need It?
Google Analytics is a free service that shows you where your website traffic is coming from: keywords they used, how long they stayed on your site, and what pages they visited. You can get this report sent to your email on a particular schedule (like every Tuesday) or you can login to your account at any time and see how your site is performing.
One question I’m often asked is – why would you need Google Analytics if you already have a traffic analyzer in place? Many people turn to already-existing programs from their web hosting company such as AWStats (which comes with Cpanel in your hosting account) and Sitemeter (a free website traffic tracking service).
The reason being is that since Google delivers the lion’s share of search engine traffic, it makes sense to use their system to get a better idea of where people are coming from, and what search terms they used to get there.
Rather than just giving you visitor counts by month/week/day, Google Analytics goes beyond just numbers to produce meaningful details – including how long people stayed on your site and what pages they visited, in addition to what browsers they were using and what connection speed they were browsing at.
Getting Started
To get started, go to www.google.com/analytics/ and click the “Sign Up Now” link under the “Access Analytics” button. Or if you already have another Google service (like Gmail), you can just login to your regular Google account and add analytics to it.
You can do this once you login to Gmail. After you’re logged in, just click the link above and add Analytics to your Gmail account. Here’s a helpful checklist that will make sure you’ve got everything set up correctly.
Using WordPress? ThankfuImage may be NSFW.
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lly, you don’t have to copy and paste that code onto every page. A helpful and free plugin called Google Analytics for Wordpress can do it for you. All you have to do is give WordPress permission to access your analytics account – and you’re all set!
Once you’ve got your site set up with analytics and you’ve got the checkmark that shows it’s tracking correctly, it’s time to set up conversion goals. Click on the name of the website you want to set conversion goals for, and when its page opens, under the Actions column, click Edit.
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Setting up conversion goals in Google Analytics
Setting Conversion Goals
Scroll down on this new page until you get to a section marked Goals. You’ll see they’re labeled Set 1, Set 2, Set 3 and Set 4. Each set could target something completely different: email marketing could fall under Set 1, and pay-per-click marketing under Set 2, for example. But for right now, to keep things simple, we’ll just be working with Set 1.
Give your goal a name (so you can easily recognize it when you get your analytics report), leave “Active Goal” set to On, and then choose a goal type. Here’s what each one means:
- URL Destination– When the goal is for the user to get to a certain URL. When you choose this, you also get some more specific options –
- Head Match– This is used when you have individual IDs as the destination URL which change with each user. Like www.example.com/ checkout.php? page=1&ID=123456.Since the ending always changes, this conversion goal makes it so that Google Analytics only reads the first part of this URL, not the ID. So if you set the URL destination to www.example.com/ checkout.php?page=1 – Google will understand that everything after that part will always change, and it can track the goal successfully.
- Regular Expression Match – You’d use this setting if you have options on your website such as different languages for the checkout process or users coming from different subdomains. So by selecting this type, you ensure that different paths throughout your website all lead to the same conversion goal.
- Exact Match – If you use a regular “thank you” page, such as the kind you’d set up through Paypal’s shopping cart or checkout (like www.example.com/checkout/ or www.example.com/thanks.html) you’d use the Exact Match URL, since it doesn’t change for each user, and no matter where people come from through your website, they all end up at the same thank you page.
Creating a Goal Funnel in Analytics
- Goal Funnel– This is optional but recommended if you have a general checkout process such as the kind used in an ecommerce shopping cart. Using a Goal Funnel, you can see how many users completed different steps of the checkout process.Highly recommended if you’re dealing with a high shopping cart abandonment rate, or are getting lots of visits, but few sales.
That’s it! You’ve set up your first Conversion Goal. You can repeat these steps if you’d like to set up different goals for different areas of your website – for instance, how many people ultimately subscribe to your newsletter after reading a blog post? How many subscribers purchased your latest offer? These are precisely the kinds of things you can track in Analytics.
You can create up to 20 different conversion goals and you can edit them at any time, though it’s a good idea to let them run for 1-2 weeks (depending on how much traffic you get) to see how many people are going through the entire process, or if there’s something stopping up your sales funnel.
In the next part of the series, I’ll explain how to use Google Webmaster Tools. You may have your Analytics code already tracking your website, but Webmaster Tools will help you see precisely what Google sees, and if it found any errors along the way.
Despite its name, this isn’t something you’ll want to primarily rely on your webmaster to do — it’s just as important that you, the site owner, understand if there are any obstacles preventing people from taking the action you want them to on your site.
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