As a webmaster with over 15 years of experience, I know that tracking goals is one of the most important things you can do for your WordPress site.
Goals show you what content resonates with users and leads to conversions like signups, purchases, and more. Without goals, it‘s nearly impossible to know if your site is actually succeeding.
In this comprehensive guide, I‘ll share everything I‘ve learned about setting up effective goals in Google Analytics for WordPress.
Contents
What Are Goals and Why Are They Crucial?
Goals allow you to track desired user actions and conversions on your site.
For example:
-
eCommerce stores can track purchases to see revenue over time. This helps them identify top-selling products.
-
Bloggers may want to track email newsletter signups to grow their subscriber list.
-
Coaches can track contact form submissions to see how many prospects request information.
Essentially, goals help you measure micro-conversions that eventually lead to bigger wins like sales. They show you which content and traffic sources produce the best results.
With this data, you can double down on what‘s working and improve areas that need optimization.
Here are some key reasons why goal tracking is so important:
-
See which pages encourage conversions like purchases and signups. Then you can optimize those pages further.
-
Find out which traffic sources like social media or email sends the most customers. Allocate budget to the best channels.
-
If you run ads, view campaigns with the highest return on ad spend based on conversions. Pause low performers.
-
Discover areas with high exit rates and troubleshoot issues to reduce people leaving.
-
Set targets for conversions and benchmark growth over time.
A BrightEdge study found that 78% of top digital marketers rely on goal tracking to gauge campaign performance. Another survey showed that goal setting leads to a 64% higher ROI for digital marketing activities.
Clearly, goals provide the context you need to make smart, data-driven decisions. Without them, it‘s guesswork.
How to Set Up Goals in Google Analytics
Next, let‘s explore how to create goals in Google Analytics. We‘ll cover both manual setup and using MonsterInsights.
Manually Creating Goals in Google Analytics
Here are the steps to manually add goals in Google Analytics:
- Log in to your Analytics account and navigate to your site‘s property.
- Click on Admin and go to the Goals section.
- Click the red "+ New Goal" button.
- Choose your goal type, like Destination for tracking page visits.
- Give your goal a name and fill in details like the destination URL.
- Set a numeric value for goal completions if desired.
- Ensure your goal is set up properly to track accurately.
- Click "Save" to create the goal.
- Repeat the process for any other goals you want to track.
- Allow time for goal data to populate. Check reports.
This manual process works, but it can get tedious fast. It‘s also easy to make mistakes that prevent proper goal tracking.
Let‘s compare that to using a plugin like MonsterInsights.
Setting Up Goals with MonsterInsights
The easiest way to add goals in WordPress is by using MonsterInsights. This is the best Google Analytics plugin available.
MonsterInsights seamlessly connects your WordPress site with Google Analytics. It sets up tracking for you automatically in a few clicks.
For goal tracking, MonsterInsights has addons that make it simple:
-
eCommerce: Automatically tracks all key store metrics for WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, MemberPress, and more.
-
Forms: Track conversion rates for contact forms, lead generation forms, surveys, and any other form submissions.
-
Ads: See how much revenue is generated from affiliate links, display ads, and other types of ads on your site.
-
Media: Find your top performing videos, audio clips, and all other media content based on plays, completion rate, and more.
The best part about MonsterInsights is that everything works right out of the box. Just install and activate the addons you need, and the plugin handles the rest.
Here‘s a comparison of the two goal setup methods:
| Method | Time to Setup | Learning Curve | Chance of Errors |
|---|---|---|---|
| Manual | High | Steep | Very Likely |
| MonsterInsights | Low | Minimal | Very Unlikely |
As you can see, MonsterInsights is clearly the easier and more beginner-friendly way to add goals in WordPress.
Now let‘s look at some examples of goals you may want to track for different sites:
- Blog: Email newsletter signups, contact form submissions, outbound link clicks
- eCommerce: Purchases, adding to cart, visiting checkout page
- Lead Gen: Downloading a gated asset like an ebook, requesting a quote
- Coach: Booking a call, signing up for a free workshop
- Agency: Contact form submissions, downloading a services guide
Track goals that align with your business objectives and help you measure success.
Google Analytics 4 and Tracking Events
Recently, Google introduced the next generation of their analytics platform called Google Analytics 4 (GA4).
One of the major changes is that GA4 uses events instead of traditional goals to track user behavior.
In GA4, you would create custom events to track actions like:
- Video plays
- Button clicks
- Downloads
- Purchases
- Outbound links
And anything else you want to measure.
At first glance, this seems complicated compared to goals. But MonsterInsights makes it just as easy.
The plugin automatically upgrades your existing goals to track as events in GA4. So you still get all the powerful conversion data without any extra work.
Getting More Value from Your Analytics Data
Setting up goals and events is an important first step. But it‘s just the beginning.
To gain more insights, take advantage of other reports in Google Analytics:
-
Goal funnels show where users drop off so you can optimize those areas.
-
Cohort analysis shows how user behavior changes over time.
-
CRM integration combines analytics data with your customer database.
-
Attribution modeling shows the influence of different marketing channels on conversions.
-
Custom dashboards let you monitor the metrics that matter most to your business.
With MonsterInsights, all this functionality is built directly into WordPress. You get a full view of your key analytics data right from your dashboard.
Take Action Today
As a webmaster, I can‘t emphasize enough how crucial goal tracking is. Goals give you the insights you need to thrive online.
My recommendation is to use MonsterInsights to get set up quickly and easily. Spend more time benefiting from your analytics data, and less time installing everything.
What goals will you start tracking first? Let me know if you have any other questions – I‘m happy to help fellow webmasters succeed with analytics!
