{"id":550,"date":"2013-12-08T10:24:02","date_gmt":"2013-12-08T15:24:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.softwareab.net\/wordpress\/?p=550"},"modified":"2014-01-13T12:29:38","modified_gmt":"2014-01-13T17:29:38","slug":"google-analytics-goal-urls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.softwareab.net\/wordpress\/google-analytics-goal-urls\/","title":{"rendered":"Google Analytics and Goal URLs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Use Google Analytics as a low-cost (read: free<\/em>) solution for getting traffic counts. Analytics offers several features to make this easier, including the ability to define a Goal URL<\/a>, which Google defines as a measure of how often visitors take or complete specific actions. For a travel site, a Goal URL might be the “Submit” button for creating a reservation. For this particular project, we used the “Contact Us” page from the FaceWorks web site.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

While writing a blog on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and WordPress, I found that there was way too much information to put out in a single post. So I broke up the post into multiple sections with individual blog entries for each section where possible. Here is the section on a “Google Goal” within Analytics.<\/p>\n

To setup the Goal URL:<\/p>\n

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  1. Login<\/strong> to the Google Analytics<\/a> page.<\/li>\n
  2. Navigate to the Products page<\/strong> to get to Google Analytics. As of this writing this is kinda stupid interface-wise, see our other post on Google Product access<\/a>.<\/li>\n
  3. Click on the “Admin” button<\/strong> at the top of the screen. Let’s show it below since screenshots are *so much fun* to do in WordPress. Not.
    \n    \"SEO<\/a><\/li>\n
  4. Select the web site.<\/strong> OK – now you should be in the Admin page. So first make sure you select the web site you want to modify. For this post, it’s the “faceworksevents.com”<\/a> site. Of course, to edit the particular web site within Google Analytics, you do not select something named “Web Site”. Instead, you select the “Property”. And if you are not currently monitoring any Web site? You “Create a new property”. Of course. Natch. What could be more intuitive from the second largest IT firm in the world<\/a>? At least as of 2012. Which of course is ancient news. Probably Google has shuttered down to either Larry’s or Sergey’s mom’s garage by now. Things move fast in Internet time! So the picture is below…
    \n    \"Select<\/a>\n<\/li>\n
  5. \nSelect “Goals” from the “All Web Site Data” view (profile).<\/strong> The only thing to note here? The “View” shown below is a relatively new artifact; as of August, 2013 Views are Renamed as Profiles<\/a>. So here’s another picture…am I a clever programmer or what?
    \n    \"Select<\/a>\n<\/li>\n
  6. \nSelect the Goal URL(s).<\/strong> This last step is to define what a “goal” is – think of goals as calls to action for your readers. In my example, there are *two* goals I want to track:<\/p>\n