I read a lot of articles on marketing topics. A quick scan
of the headlines of MarektingProfs.com
articles shows a trend: “Three Tips for
High-ROI Calls to Action…Make a Picture Worth a Thousand Conversions…Why
Content Marketing Across the Revenue Cycle is Crucial…” – in a marketer’s
world, sales goals, ROI and conversions are critical. But this is a blog – a
blog for a Web Analytics class. I never intend to sell anything on here nor do
I intend to use this blog to drive traffic from here to sell something
somewhere else. This is just a blog where I wax poetic about various web
analytics topics about once a week. So, how do I select and create non-monetary
goals? And what are my goals for this blog? I’m quickly learning that measuring
intangible goals is a little tough.
Lessons from Avinash
Kaushik
Avinash Kaushik, author of Web Analytics 2.0 and the wildly popular blog, Occam’s Razor, explains
that although his blog has no advertising, consulting hours or ecommerce, he
still has goals for his blog which are built into his analytics tool. His goals
are mostly focused around building engagement (which is important for this blog);
however he can tie a monetary amount to
booking speaking engagements. Avinash explains that you should direct your
focus toward the “critical few” and “focus on the handful of things that
matter.” (Kaushik, 2010).
Applying Kaushik’s
Advice
What are my “critical few” and what “handful of things that
matter” should I focus on? According to Google, an analytics goal “represents
an activity or a level of interaction on your website that’s important to your
business.” My business (or place of employment) provides educational training
and resources, so by applying this principal to my company, I would set goals
on the number of conversions on training program registrations, whitepaper
downloads and even researched news stories. But for the purpose of this blog
post, I need to focus on this blog.
There are four types
of goals in Google Analytics. Let’s review:
1
URL Destination Goals – These goals track specific URLs, which trigger a conversion each time somebody lands on the URL. For example, you may set a URL Destination Goal as a “thank you” page which appears after a purchase, since it signals that the purchase is complete. Although I don’t plan to use this goal as a measurement of success for this blog, I do plan to revisit this goal later – and possibly set some destination goals on my work website.
Time on Site Goals – The explanation is pretty much in the title of this one. For time on site goals you can set the parameters as ‘greater than, equal to, or less than.’ At first, I couldn’t understand why you would set a goal as “less than,” but as Google explains in this super helpful tutorial, sometimes the goal is to move people quickly through a website.
Since I need to measure engagement, I have set this as a goal. I estimate that it takes around 4 minutes to read a 500 word blog post and a little more to read the 1000 word posts. For this reason, I set my time on site goal at over 4 minutes.
Results. I set this goal one week ago on Monday, June 25. After one week my conversion rate is 9.09 percent. Translated into real numbers, four visitors spent 4 or more minutes on my blog and the visits were divided (one each) between the following posts: Deconstructing LC’s Blog Using Google Analytics; The Battle for the Crown: Is Content or Conversation King?; Google AdWords or Facebook Advertising. What’s the best Strategy for Hitting Your Target?; and You Don’t Have to do the Math to Use the Math. Although I realize only four visitors staying more than four minutes is nothing to write home about, I’m quite pleased to see that anyone actually stuck around for four or more minutes. Below is the pie chart showing the breakdown.
(The smiley face is my addition – although I think it’s something Google should consider this as a self-confidence booster.)
Pages/visits Goals – This is another goal that needs no explanation. For page/visit goals you can also set the parameters as ‘greater than, equal to, or less than.’ For me, any visit that goes beyond one page is viewed as a success. In last week’s blog post, I discussed the fact that I was a little disappointed by the fact that this blog has a bounce rate of 64 percent. Professor Wells reminded me that with blogs, people generally read the information they were seeking out and then move on, so a higher bounce rate may be OK. This made me feel better, but I still would like to see more page views per visit.
I set a goal of 2+ page views per visit one week ago and had a conversion rate of 6.82 percent – or 3 visits. Not earth shattering, but I’ll take it.
Event Goals – Event goals are tied to “event tracking” in Google Analytics. I don’t plan to use either, but will offer this explanation cited from Google’s Analytics Blog:
You can use Event Tracking in Google Analytics to track visitor actions that don't correspond directly to page views. It's a great fit for tracking things like:
- Downloads of a PDF or other file
- Interaction with dynamic or AJAX sites
- Interaction with Adobe Flash objects, embedded videos, and other media
- Number of errors users get when attempting to checkout
- How long a video was watched on your site
Funnels
I also learned about funnels this week, although I have not
had the chance to apply funnels to my selected goals. Funnels are the steps you
expect your site visitor to take on their way to completing a conversion. This
is critical on ecommerce sites as it helps to diagnose issues (like cart
abandonment) and helps to create a streamlined process to improve your site. It
is also important because it allows you to see where your visitors enter and
exit the conversion process. Once I learn a little more about analytics, I may
suggest some funnels for my company website.
Low Expectations
I’m actually surprised to find that I had anything to
measure in my established goals, so I’m fairly pleased this week. I’m excited
to start using my new skills on a website that actually generates traffic.
Kaushik, A. (2010). Web analytics 2.0: the art of online
accountability & science of customer centricity. Hoboken, N.J: Wiley.
Mihailovski, N. (2011, April 10). The New Google Analytics:
Events Goals - Analytics Blog. Analytics Blog. Retrieved July 2, 2012,
from http://analytics.blogspot.com/2011/04/new-google-analytics-events-goals.html
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