How Do You Choose a Google Analytics Goal Value?
How do You Choose a Google Analytics Goal Value?
If you’re reading this, you probably have goals set up in your Google Analytics account, right?
Read full article - https://goo.gl/yDTFPR
Sign up for our FREE Google Analytics Mini-Course - https://goo.gl/9GnLyk
And if you don’t, why not? Shame on you! – Ok, I’m not serious. We won’t make you wear a scarlet “G” for not setting up Goals.
Google Analytics goal values
The truth is, setting up Goals can totally suck.
But, goals are a vital part of Google Analytics. Without goal tracking, most of our conversion reports are useless.
The biggest PIA in the goal set up process is choosing a goal value.
Most of the time we don’t have access to all the numbers we need to calculate the exact value of email opt-ins, or from submissions.
So what do you do? Assign no value? Pick an arbitrary number?
Let’s solve this problem together.
In this post and video, I am going to help you figure out how to assign values to your goals in Google Analytics. We’ll also discuss how to choose a goal value even if you don’t have access to all the data you need.
What’s the problem with goals?
These things are so 2006!
It’s easy to get psyched out or frustrated setting up goals in Google Analytics. The goal options are rigid and outdated. They operate based on web design and online marketing paradigms from 2006.
Now don’t get me wrong. We still want to use goals. But if you’re thinking “this doesn’t make sense,” you’re not alone.
Goal options
Your goal types include:
Destination
Session duration
Pages/screens per session
Event
goal types
Destination goals
The destination goal is triggered by someone hitting a URL on your website. This goal is commonly used to assign conversion values to email opt-ins or form submissions. The trigger URL for this goal is usually a “thank you” page. (I may be one the few marketers left that still uses thank you pages, and that’s only because I am analytics purest).
Session duration and pages per session goals
Very few websites generate any real value from sessions or pageviews. So, I recommend most people avoid these goals.
Event goals
The event goal is triggered by an action on a web page. The most common example of an event goal is a video view.
Who knows these numbers?
The other problem with goals is that they require information we don’t always have access to.
As an analyst or marketer, you may not know what your company’s close rate is from online form submissions. Or, you might not have access to the data that helps you calculate the lifetime value of an email subscriber.
Internal company politics, and lack of communication often play a role in limiting our access to the data we need.
Also, for many businesses, these numbers are rough estimates at best.
Yet, Google Analytics still needs this information for us to enable goal tracking.
Technically easy… Practically difficult
I created a previous tutorial on setting up goals. So, if you need help with the technical aspects of enabling goals, you can reference this video and post – https://www.jeffalytics.com/google-an....
In our previous tutorial I skipped over the pain point we’re talking about here. That’s because goal values deserves thier own tutorial.
Google Analytics goals are technically very easy to set up. But deciding on the practical implications of your goals is difficult.
Thanks to a question from Analytics Course student Adana, the rest of this tutorial will be about choosing goal values.
Analytics Course student question
Adnan asks:
In terms of assigning a value to a goal, if you have an e-commerce site, couldn’t your goal be the purchase of that product. For instance, could one of the goals for Jeffaytics Analytics Course be the purchase of a course valued at $500?
What value do you put in for your Goals
Before we delve into the ways we can assign goals values, let’s review Google’s guidance.
goal value
Google’s basically telling you to take your internal company data a do some math. And there’s nothing wrong with this direction. In fact, I would say their advice is accurate. But it won’t help us if we don’t have the internal data they are referencing.
Sometimes you have to rely on other resources to determine your goal values.
Here are some other numbers we could use as a goal value
Maximum product value
Average order value
Minimum order value
Average Lead value
Target cost per lead
An arbitrary number
No value at all
The perfect value
Before we decide on the right goal value to use, here are a few things we need to consider:
1) Goal values are static, (except for event goals.)
Goal values do not dynamically change based on other factors. Let’s say you assign a $5 value to a goal. T
Read full article - https://goo.gl/yDTFPR
Sign up for our FREE Google Analytics Mini-Course - https://goo.gl/9GnLyk