What are Goal Conversions in Google Analytics and Why are they Important?

Before I discuss what goal conversions are in Google Analytics its important to take a step back and first look at what Google Analytics is and why you might want to have it running on your website?

What is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics is a free tool (there is a paid for version) that allows you to place a small piece of code on your website and start tracking your website visitor’s behaviour like how many pages they visit, what country they are in and how long they stayed on your site are just a few. But why would you want to do this? Well one good reason would be to enable you to see what pages are popular and which are not so popular and might need some work.

With Analytics you could also see where lots of people are dropping off your site which might indicate a road block on your site you could fix and solve the issue. For example, if you have a high number of people not completing a contact form but lots of visitors to the form page, this may indicate the form is not working or too long?

It can also let you know where your visitors have come from, for example, if you have a Google AdWords campaign running then you will be able to see the statistics for this traffic type (as long a connected correctly) in your Google Analytics reports. This is useful especially if you are paying for advertising.

What are goal conversions?

So now we know that it’s a good idea to have Google Analytics running on your website to track your website visitor’s behaviour and you are collecting all of this information what would indicate success or failure to you? This is a goal conversion! For example, if you run an insurance company and you sell car insurance policies then the completed sale of a policy through your site would be a goal conversion.

You can set up a goal (conversion) in Google Analytics to track every time you make a sale or if you’re a lead gen company then possibly every time someone completes a form or makes a call to your office? So, when you are measuring something like your recent SEO efforts like blog posts you can see how many have helped generate sales or leads for you. It can also help if you are spending budget on paid advertising like AdWords or Facebook ads, as long as all connected correctly then it will be able to show you how they are performing.

So, there you have it a quick summary on what goal conversions are and why they are important for your business. Your web developer should be able to help set up the tracking code for you if you do not have it running. If you do not have a web developer or they do not have the technical skills in Analytics get in touch and I would be happy to discuss your requirements.