Web Marketing all-in-one for Dummies®

Chapter 5. Using Conversion Goals

In This Chapter

• Setting conversion goals

• Analyzing goal conversions

• Technical issues with goal tracking

• Interpreting conversion data

A major step in moving from reporting to analytics is knowing what you want to measure in terms of your business goals. This goes beyond visits or traffic, and usually moves to leads or sales or something similar.

Note

In the biz, we call those conversions. A conversion occurs any time a visitor changes from a visitor to a customer (a sale) or a potential customer (a lead). Conversions can also occur when a visitor somehow takes a significant step toward offering value to your business. I talk more about that later in this chapter. Regardless, a visitor converts into something more valuable than a passerby. Get it?

Although tracking pageviews, time on site, and traffic quality is helpful, you need to know how your site's helping you achieve those goals. This is where Web analytics really shines. Virtually all major Web analytics packages — including free ones, such as Yahoo! Analytics and Google Analytics — support sophisticated goal tracking.

In this chapter, I talk about selecting, tracking, and analyzing conversions; and I use Google Analytics in my examples. I suggest following along using that tool, if you can. If not, just focus on the concepts I present here because after you understand those, you can apply them to any traffic reporting package.

Determining Key Performance Indicators

Goals are based on specific metrics ...