How to setup Google Analytics Goals and Conversion Funnels

Whether your online goal is to generate sales or it is to get signups for an offer, a visitor must take certain steps in order to complete your goal. These steps are generally known as a sales funnel or a conversion funnel.

Google Analytics is a great tool which allows you to set up a goal in a sales funnel. Once setup, you can track visitors successfully completing these steps or dropping out of your sales funnel. You can also find out where people are leaving your sales funnel and correct any possible issues on those steps.

In this blog post, we are pulling back the curtains and sharing the conversion funnel wizardry that Google Analytics has to offer. It’s actually not as complex as you might think, albeit you can certainly make it as complicated as you’d like.

Let’s get started.

First, log into your Google Analytics account to start setting up the goal and funnel.

Once logged in, click on the Admin tab at the top and from there, click on Goals as highlighted in the screenshot below:

Google Analytics Home Page Main Panel

Click on + New Goal goal button as seen in the screenshot below:

Adding +New Goal in Google Analytics

Note: Google Analytics allows you a maximum of 20 goals, and once you add them, you cannot delete a goal.

Once you click on the create + New Goal button, the next screen will show you a three step process to setup the goal:

Goal setup
Goal description
Goal details

1) Goal Setup

Choose the appropriate goal type from the list or you can also setup a custom goal type. In this example, we are using Checkout Complete as our goal type. However, as you can see on the screenshot below, there is a large selection of many different types of goals that can be applied to pretty much any business and business structure.

Setting up Goals in Google Analytics

2) Goal Description

Enter the name of your goal and choose your goal completion type. Goal Completion Type means how you want to denote your goal in your funnel structure.

Here we will select Destination as our goal completion type which means we will track a goal conversion if a visitor lands on a specific page.

Setting up Goal Descriptions in Google Analytics

3) Goal Details

Destination

Enter the full url of the final page of your sales funnel. This is typically the ‘thank you’ or a ‘success’ page of a transaction on your website.

I entered – https://www.madeinnewmexico.com/checkout/xxxxxx/xxxxxx/ which is the final success page of a transaction in our Magento store.

Then set the Funnel button to On. This is important, so don’t miss this step!

google-analytics-website-optimization-for-conversions

Setting up Funnel Options in Google Analytics

Funnel Steps

Once you set Funnel to On, you will see additional options to enter steps in your sales funnel as shown in the below screenshot:

Setting up Goal Details in Google Analytics

Enter each step of your sales funnel one by one until complete. Enter the name of the step and the full url of your page as it is shown in the screen/page text box above.

In the first step, you will see one additional option for Required? Yes or No. If set to Required – Yes, it means that it is the only way to enter your sales funnel.

In an eCommerce website, a visitor can also directly land on a category or product page and we want those to also be counted, so we will set this to No.

google-analytics-sales-funnel-conversions

Setting up Required Options in Google Analytics

Verify this Goal

Google Analytics allows you to verify a goal based on the past 7 days data. Click on the Verify this Goal link and it will show you something like this:

Verifying your Goals and Connection Set Up in Google Analytics

Once you have completed and verified the goal, click on the Save button to save this goal within your conversion funnel. Overall, it should all look like the image below.

Detailed view of the Goal Detail Page in Google Analytics with all the options set

Google Analytics will now start recording all of your sales funnel data!

Funnel Visualization
Log back into Google Analytics a few days later to see what has been recorded. To check the Funnel Visualization, click on Conversions > Goals > Funnel Visualization from the left panel navigation of your Google Analytics account.

Once you navigate to the correct page, you need to choose your goal. If you have multiple goals set up, you need to select one from the dropdown menu to see your Funnel Visualization.

Funnel Visualization Set up in Google Analytics

At this point you should see your Sales Funnel that will look similar to this:

Sales Funnel in Google Analytics

There you have it! You are now able to set up Google Analytics goals and conversion funnels. Use this information to gain visibility into your sales funnel to monitor, analyze, and ultimately, optimize your it.

We’d love to hear what questions or successes you are having with Google Analytics goals and conversion funnels. Please leave a comment below and don’t forget to share this post with your colleagues and friends if you found it helpful!

If you require any assistance with eCommerce optimization, please view our website at Kinga Dow.

For any technical aspects of setting up your Google Analytics conversion metrics, please visit Axis Web Art.

Kinga Dow and Axis Web Art have been working together on developing successful eCommerce projects for many years and are happy to share their knowledge with everyone interested.