The URL Destination goal tracks when a visitor views a targeted web page, called the Goal Page. This goal type identifies the Goal Page, so each time that specific page is viewed, it counts as a conversion—a sign the goal was completed. For example, if a library has a goal involving users renewing their books online, then that library could set a “confirmation of renewing a book” web page as its Goal Page. Each time a website user gets to the screen that confirms a book has been successfully renewed, a conversion takes place. Additionally, the URL Destination goal is the only goal type that uses the Funnel feature (which will be discussed later).

An Event goal is similar to the URL Destination goal, but rather than being limited to web pages, the Event goal is triggered whenever a visitor performs a specific event. This goal type is useful only if event tracking is correctly implemented on the website, because if there is no event data, there can be no event-related goal data. The Event goal type is ideal for libraries that have goals involving any of those outbound links that are being tracked as events. This goal’s conversion is directly related to an event.

The Visit Duration goal tracks the length of time a user is on a website or specific web page: whenever that visitor stays a defined length of time, the conversion is triggered. Let’s say a library created a tutorial that should take the average user three minutes to complete. That library could create a Visit Duration goal that counts every visit that lasts longer than three minutes as a desired goal. The conversion involves the time-on-site metric.

The final goal type, Page/Visit, monitors when a visitor views a targeted number of web pages before exiting the site. If a library has a goal that a visitor should view at least two web pages before exiting the site, then the library could create a Page/Visit goal that is triggered whenever a visit lasts for at least two pages. This goal’s conversion is based on the pages-per-visit metric.

The simplest goals to create are the Visit Duration and Page/Visit goal types. Start by providing a goal name, mark the goal as active (if you are ready for it to start tracking data), and select either Visit Duration or Page/Visit as the goal type. In the Goal Details section, identify the desired visit duration or the number of pages desired to be visited in one visit. To monetize the goal, add the optional goal value. Click the Save button, and the goal is saved.

These goals are easy to set up, but they do not provide a lot of actionable data by themselves. It is highly recommended to keep them to a minimum unless your library has a specific plan for using the data.

Setting up an Event goal is similar to the Visit Duration and Page/Visit goal types until the Goal Details section, which requires you to select the category, action, label, or value of the event you wish to track as a goal. Technically, you must select at least one of these variables, but if you track many different types of events, you will generally want to select more variables to ensure you are collecting goal data for the correct event. Additionally, the Goal report can use the assigned event value or assign a different default value if your library is interested in calculating the monetary value of the event being tracked.

The URL Destination goal is the most complicated goal type to create depending on goal pages being tracked. Similar to the other goals, first select a unique goal name, mark it as active, and select URL Destination for the goal type. Under the Goal Details section, you must select the specific URL to be tracked as a goal. Note that you do not use the full URL for the web page, but rather the abbreviated page URL that Google Analytics tracks. For example, to track the web page www.uccs.edu/library/help/offcampus.html, you would enter /library/help/offcampus.html. Sound complicated? Check out your Google Analytics All Pages report (under the Content section) to see the abbreviated page URLs being used. The Goal URL box should prompt you with suggestions as you type in the URL to let you know you are on the correct track.

Next, select the match type that determines if you are tracking a single page or a group of pages in one Goal report. The Exact Match option implies Google Analytics will only track one web page as a goal page and that goal page is exactly what you typed in as your goal URL—such as the /library/help/offcampus.html example. Selecting the Head Match or Regular Expression Match means you are tracking a series of web pages as your goal URL.

The Head Match option means the goal page can be any URL that matches the beginning of the string defined in the goal page’s URL. For example, suppose a library wants to track all of its help guide-related web pages as a goal page. If all of those guide web pages are in the same subdirectory, such as www.library.org/guides, the library could set the goal URL to /guides and select Head Match as the match type. Then any help guide whose URL begins with www.library.org/guides (such as www.library.org/guides/findingbooks.html and www.library.org/guides/remoteaccess.html) would be tracked as a goal page.

The Regular Expression Match is the most flexible option, which allows you to use regular expression (regex) in your goal URL string to precisely identify the set of the pages to track as a goal. This match type is ideal when the goal pages you want to track reside in different subdirectories. Refer to Google Analytics regex guide, “About Regular Expressions,” for ideas on how to use regex to correctly craft your goal URL.

Google Analytics: About Regular Expressions

http://support.google.com/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1034324

After selecting the match type, you can choose if the goal pages are case-sensitive—leave blank if your URL string is not case-sensitive. Assign a goal value to the goal if desired.

Lastly, you have an option to set up a funnel. This choice is available only for URL Destination goals and is completely optional. A funnel outlines the expected path to a goal page. It is designed to show you where website users are leaving the assigned funnel/pathway and not completing the desired goal. If you choose to create a funnel, check the Use Funnel box and identify the specific web pages you anticipate website users must navigate through in order to reach the specific goal page. Add as many funnel steps as web page users have to travel through to the goal page. After all that customization, do not forget to save the goal.

The Goal Overview report is a standard report that tells you how often a goal is completed. It provides the total completions of the goal (number of conversions), accrued goal value (if value was assigned), conversion rate (this is number of conversions divided by total number of visits to the entire website: it puts in perspective how often a visit results in triggering the goal), and the abandonment rate if a funnel was enabled for the goal. The report also includes a direct link to the traffic sources that contributed to the goal and the goal completion locations pulled from the Goal URLs report.

The Goal URLs report shows the web pages where goals were completed. For a URL Destination goal, the goal completion location will most likely be the actual goal page. Other goals, such as Visit Duration or Page/Visit goal types could be whatever web page the visitor was on when the conversion was triggered for those goals. This report is particularly useful for the event goals because it shows which pages more often caused the event if the event is located on more than one page.

Since this report is available only for URL Destination goals, it is not useful for any other type of Goal report. Yet it is still worthwhile to have if your URL Destination goal page has a desired path you want your users to navigate to reach the goal page—just remember to set up the funnel when you configure the goal.

If a funnel is properly implemented, this report shows you where website users enter your site and the pages they access to reach the goal page. Funnels are useful because they show where users abandon the process before reaching the goal page. This can help pinpoint potential problems with the site leading users to that goal page. Figure 6.2 shows a funnel for the goal to get website users to the psychology databases. The funnel was set to start tracking from the library’s home page. Over 21,000 visits took place on the home page, but only 3,445 visits continued to the Databases by Subject web page, which is the next page required in the steps to access the psychology databases. From there, fewer users selected to go to the Psychology Databases web page and even fewer actually ended their visit to the library’s website by clicking on a psychology database link. This really is not too surprising since the library has numerous databases available in other subject areas and not every single visitor to the library’s website wants to use a psychology database. However, it does show some interesting findings, including that roughly 25 percent of the visitors who are on the Psychology Databases web page do not click on a psychology database and end up going to a different section of the website or just leave the site!

Not every URL Destination goal makes an ideal candidate to be tracked in a funnel. If you cannot identify a clear path to the goal page, feel free to skip the funnel setup because the next Goal report also helps you understand how users can reach a goal page.

The Reverse Goal Path report shows the last three steps, or web pages, a visitor navigated in order to complete the goal. This report is available for any goal type and is ideal for understanding the most popular routes users take to trigger that conversion. The information is invaluable even for goals with funnels because it shows other potential routes to the goal page. Figure 6.3 presents a reverse goal path for an event goal. The Goal Completion Location is the web page where the event was triggered, and Goal Previous Step - 1 is the web page the visitor was on before reaching the web page with the event. Step - 2 and Step - 3 are the previous web pages the visitor was on before reaching Step - 1. Basically, the visitor navigated from Step - 3, to Step - 2, to Step - 1, to finally trigger the event on the Goal Completion Location. Note that (entrance) refers to the visitor entering the website at that point and (not set) implies that the visitor was not currently on the website. In the example in figure 6.3, the most common route to triggering the event was to land on the library’s home page, navigate directly to the Medicine/Health Sciences Database page, and click on the outbound database link (the actual event). This is a great sign that those users know how to quickly navigate to that resource.

The final Goal report is the Goal Flow report, which uses a flowchart to visualize how the majority of users navigate through your goal steps. This report is available for all of the goal types, but it is currently useful only for URL Destination goals and does not report useful information for the other goal types. The main advantage of this report is that it encourages you to segment your data to look at specific subsets of visitors.