Everybody knows somebody just like this.
She’s glowing on the outside, all put together and eternally positive.
Her business is KILLING IT. And not just because her blog looks so good and she’s obviously invested money in professional design and content. That too, but you’ve had an inside look. You know about her numbers. Seriously raking it in.
And yet . . . something’s missing. You haven’t got a clue about it – why would you? It’s the kind of thing people don’t talk about.
She’s Google Analytics illiterate.
You’re right, you’re right – I should be fair. She’s not illiterate, just not winning any data-driven spelling bees.
I have one of those friends, and I still can’t completely wrap my brain around it. This lady’s been in business for a few years, taking an offline venture online about 2 years ago. She’s got a beautiful website site, truly astounding products, and some blog posts that will literally change your life.
Needless to say I was thrilled to start working with her.
So we’re strategizing for her next launch, talking about what’s already working so we could build on that. I head into her Google Analytics account to try to see where the people who ended up buying from her were coming from. It’s one of my favorite things about Google Analytics – there’s great information about what your visitors do right before they become customers!
But no. There was no data for me to dig my teeth into. Why? Because she didn’t know how to set up Goals in Google Analytics.
Yes, I could look at how visitors were finding her site in general terms, but that can only take you so far! It’s really common to get a lot of traffic from a specific source (like Facebook, for example) but those people don’t end up buying from you. It’s not always Facebook, but it typically happens.
If you don’t have Goals set up, there’s a lot of info you’re missing out on. The biggest problem, though, is that you can’t see what websites or sources (social or otherwise) are making you the most money.
And when it comes to upping your game and taking a good thing (your business) and making it brilliant, this is THE piece of information you need act on.
So I want you to take about 6 minutes and set up your Goals in Google Analytics. You’re going to need:
A Google Analytics account.
(If you don’t have one yet, bookmark this post and put it on your calendar to come back here. Then click here to learn how to set up your Google Analytics account, or shoot me a message and I can help you out.)
The url of the “thank you” page for this specific conversion.
When I go to your site and sign up for your newsletter or free content, I’m directed to a page that says “Success! You’re all signed up, just go check your inbox” or something like that. Same thing happens when I buy your product – I see some kind of confirmation page. This is what I call the “thank you page.”
Go and opt-in to your own newsletter, or do a test purchase of your product. Now look at the url of the thank you page – is it one of YOUR pages, a page on your website? If so, skip right to the video below because you’re good to go.
Or is your thank you page on a Mailchimp, Aweber, or other external domain page?
If this is the case of your thank you page, do not despair. You can throw together a super-simple page in 5 minutes on Wordpress. All you need is some copy that says “thanks!” and maybe a reminder to check their email or whatever next action they need to take.
Once you’ve got that page together, make sure your Mailchimp or Paypal or whoever’s involved send people to that page after the opt-in or purchase and not some other page on their domain.
Now let’s do this.
Get pumped – you’re gonna be so happy with yourself in just a minute. Now click play on this baby:
That wasn’t so hard, was it?
Here’s how to see if your Goal is tracking correctly:
- Mark your calendar for 1 week from now and come back here to this blog post (paste the link in the calendar reminder so that it’s easy to access).
- Open up your Google Analytics and make it look exactly like this by clicking on these various menus:
- Follow my instructions in the video to make sure you can see that info about where your conversions are coming from.
And you’re good!
Got any questions for me? Having any trouble getting your Goals set up? Not sure which conversions you need to be tracking?
That tutorial was FANTASTIC. I was one of those folks who hadn’t even set up Google Analytics. I was depending on my web builders data. Thanks for opening up that door, I can only imagine how much time this could save me in the future!
I’m really glad you found it helpful, Jill! This is the number one mistake I see small biz owners make, and it’s a shame because you can’t go back in time to get all the data you’re missing! Congrats on walking through that door. :)
Thanks Claire – all set up, both Google Analytics and a conversion tracking goal. Very helpful
Thank you Claire, very Helpfull. I’m just wondering why I need to make sure the thank you url adres should be like you say it should. What will this achieve?
Hi Virginie, thanks for stopping by! I don’t quite understand your question – what other way would you create the thank you page url?
And another stupid question: why is it interesting to register with GA how many people ended up on the thank you page after registration for your guide (in your example) since you can already register how many people applied by counting the emailadresses…..
Not stupid at all! Your email provider can tell you how many people got on your list, but not how many people actually saw your landing page to begin with. GA can show you your conversion rate AND the traffic sources that convert the best. For example, it shows me which guest posts that I published send me the most traffic, and which ones actually got me subscribers. Does that make sense?
Hey Claire,
Becca Tracey sent me to this article. I am pumped to start tracking so I can hire you and you can have some info to work with ;) I have put in my goals with the tracking webpages and even though I know there has been traffic over the past couple days, it still says 0% conversions. I have tried both the Begins with and the Equals to options. Any idea why it would say 0%? I even opted into my own list with two separate emails to see if it would track and it hasn’t. Stumped.
Hey Jenn, pleasure to have you over here on the blog! Sounds like Becca put you on a good path. :)
So the basic question first: are you sure Google Analytics is tracking visits? Is there basic data under Audience > Overview?
If the answer is yes, then my second question is: is the landing page/thank you page hosted on something like leadpages or optimizepress?
Thank you so much Claire! I’ve been so overwhelmed with google analytics and setting up the goals using your video was so much simpler than I ever imagined it could be. Thank you for being so awesome!
My absolute pleasure, Samantha! Busting through overwhelm in these analytics-y things is the name of my game. :)
You rock, Claire! Thank you for breaking this down!
You’re so welcome, Billie!
Claire – what if you use lead pages for your thank you page vs. a thank you page right on your site? Can you set up goals using that thank you page?
Yup, you absolutely can so long as you use the Leadpages WP plugin so that the url is on your domain, and not LP’s. For a while clairepells.com/youre-in was a LP page and that’s always been a goal of mine in GA.
what if i don’t use wordpress?
Fortunately the process for setting up your goals in GA doesn’t change if you don’t use Wordpress!
Found the answer!
Great!
Hi Claire, I have a wix site (at least for the time being) and have followed the instructions to set up my goals in GA, however, it is still not registering the goals despite the conversions that have come through today. Please advise.
Sorry Amy, I’m not familiar with Wix sites at all. I would recommend you make sure you don’t have any extra forward slashes in the goal, and that you’ve chosen “begins with” and not equals. I hope that helps!
hi! What’s the best way to combine a thank you page from an external site (ie: Teachable) and my own site? If I don’t put the http://www.urlname.com in, can you combine the two?
Hi Susie, does teachable give you an option to integrate with your GA account? If it doesn’t, it probably isn’t possible to set up goals without some very fancy coding.