Imagine you just checked your Google Analytics report and found that month over month, visits to your site are up 25%. You'd be happy, right? Well you should be, but you should also ask what all those extra visits did that was meaningful.
One of the best, and easiest, ways to link web visits to results is to set up goals. By setting up goals, you get reports on the select few visitors that had the need and determination to get the most out of your site. Your site might just be a few pages, or it might be millions. Out of all that web content, what really matters is action. Measure meaningful action, and your website will become more valuable overnight.
The actions you measure depend on your business. You can get started by asking the following questions:
What is the purpose of my site (to drive leads, sell products, inform, entertain, etc.)?
What is the best possible thing my website can do for me, and can I measure it?
How do I keep in touch with visitors to retain their attention and interest?
Are there incremental steps to my site purpose (e.g. downloading product brochures before purchasing)?
Your answers to every one of these questions can become the basis of a goal. With goals, you can easily see that out of 10,000 visits, 500 resulted in product purchases. Or you can see the number of people signing up for your email newsletter, and determine if that percentage and volume is increasing over time.
Goals can also have economic value, even if they don't result in sales. For example, if you know that each email newsletter you send brings in $5,000 of sales, divide that revenue by the people on your subscriber list. $5,000 divided by 50,000 subscribers is $0.10 per subscriber. If you send out newsletters twice a month, the yearly value of each subscriber is $2.40. Now every time you get a newsletter signup, you can estimate that you made $2.40! This assumes that average subscribers stay on your list for a year. Is all the time you're putting into newsletters paying off? You'll never know without goals.
To set up a simple goal, identify the "thankyou" page -- the URL a visitor sees after completing your desired action. Click "edit" in your Google Analytics profile, and fill in the info shown below. Goal value is optional, but recommended to monetize goal actions.
Alright, now that your goal is setup just wait for the data to roll in! You'll be rewarded with the following report:
Alright, we see that since December we've had a substantial increase in our goal completions. We're also seeing an excellent conversion rate -- a sign that our goal is really resonating with our customer base. Excellent! Abandonment rate applies if there are multiple steps to completing your goal. Multi-step goals, or funnels, will be the focus of an upcoming Tip of the Day. Now you have all you need to begin measuring real value, rather than hits. Combine this with our article on segmenting, and you're well on your way to transforming the way you measure, and improve, your online results!
How to make a goal in a website that just offers information and the revenue comes from adsense.
Do I just measure it by the CTR % ?? Or google analytics is still useful to quantify the ROI or How to quantify my ROI?
Regards.
There's great news for you! Analytics integrates with Adsense revenue data. Rather than setting up goals for ad clicks, it's best to use native integration. The reporting is much better and ad revenue often changes, so goals aren't well suited for the task.
To setup integration, just log into Adsense and then check Google's official video at http://adsense.blogspot.com/2009/04/analytics-integration-for-all.html
You might be interested in our free webinar, too. You'll find out how to reach customers through Google and Facebook, and track your ROI with analytics. You'll also learn how a client achieved $28 in sales for every $1 spent on ads. Register at www.valitics.com/webinar
Thanks.