How To Track Goals In Google Analytics

So, now you’ve got your very specific goal and Google Analytics set up, right?Now I’m going to show you how to track that goal directly in Google Analytics easily.To use an example, we’ll start with a measurable goal like this:“I want to increase my newsletter subscribers by 15% in 60 days.”

1. First, set up a “thank you” page on your site. This is the page where you send your new subscribers to after they’ve signed up for your newsletter where you can thank them.
2. Once you have that made, note the url of your “thank you” page. I find it most practical to copy the url directly from the browser address bar and paste it into a text file for reference.
3. Now, log into your newsletter subscriber’s site. Depending on your newsletter subscriber, you should have an option to redirect your new subscribers to your thank you page. All major newsletter subscribers have this option. Once you find that, paste in your url into that setting so that all of your new subscribers are going to the “thank you” page on your site rather than the one the newsletter provider sets for you.
4. Now, log into your Google Analytics account.
5. Click on the “edit” button to the right of your site link.
6. You should now see an area if you scroll down a little called only “goals”. Click on the first link on the right to “add goal”.
7. Name your goal as something you’ll remember like, “subscribers”. For Goal Type, select “URL Destination”.
8. You should also be given more options to input your “thank you” page information. Under “match type” select “exact match” and input your goal url as “/thank-you/” if your whole url was my site dot com / thanks. com/thank-you/
9. Save! After 24 hours, you’ll be able to see exactly how many people are signing up for your newsletter and what the conversion rate is (the number of visitors divided by the number of new subscribers) from your google analytics dashboard.

If you'd like to track a different kind of goal, let me know in the comments and I’ll do my best to help you.

Naomi Niles is the founder of ShiftFWD, a full service conversion optimization consultancy specializing in helping small and medium-sized businesses get more sales and leads from their websites.