| Defining goals on your website is an important step to | | | | For instance an e-commerce site will likely require that |
| measuring the ability of your website to achieve | | | | the user add an item to the cart, push the check-out |
| business objectives. Probably the best way to | | | | button, fill in their mailing & billing information, then |
| measure the effectiveness of your goals is the | | | | purchase the product. You can measure how many |
| conversion rate. The conversion rate is the total | | | | visitors move from one step to another in the process |
| number of desirable outcomes divided by the number | | | | thereby learning where visitors are leaving and where |
| of attempts to reach that outcome. The result is a | | | | you're losing potential business. |
| percentage that will indicate what portion of site | | | | (In Google Analytics, you access the goal & funnel |
| visitors successfully achieved your goal. If you're | | | | creation page by clicking to Edit Settings from the first |
| confused with the math, don't worry; your web | | | | screen when you log in to view your stats.) |
| analytics software will run the calculation for you. | | | | Your web analytics software is also able to tie a |
| Using standard web analytics software, such as | | | | monetary value to each goal that is completed. For |
| Google Analytics, you can set up and track a number | | | | instance, if the average order value of a completed |
| of goals that are important to your business. A goal | | | | shopping cart is $50, you can tell your software that |
| can be any measurable event such as a completed | | | | each goal is worth $50. Because your analytics |
| checkout on an e-commerce site, a successful | | | | software knows the source of your website traffic, |
| subscription to a newsletter, a download of a PDF | | | | you can now measure the ROI of all your Internet |
| whitepaper, or a request for more information from a | | | | marketing activities. Every goal conversion that is |
| 'Contact Us' form. | | | | attributed to an email message, paid search ad, or |
| In order to track the conversion rate for various goals | | | | banner ad is now tracked and measured for its value. |
| on your website you'll need to ensure there is a | | | | Armed with all this information you can now set out to |
| success page that is served to the user once the goal | | | | tweak your marketing tactics to improve your ROI. |
| scenario is complete. This page cannot be reachable | | | | You can also start making changes to your website to |
| by any other means, or your numbers will be incorrect. | | | | optimize goal processes and increase your conversion |
| All visits to the success page will represent a | | | | rates. |
| successful conversion in the analytics software. | | | | Now you truly know the effect your website has on |
| If there is more than one step in the process to reach | | | | the bottom line. |
| a goal, you can set up a funnel to track these steps. | | | | |