Set Goals with Google Analytics

Google Analytics offers higher education a great opportunity to learn about our digital audiences. Our experience with clients shows us that Goals — a key feature in Google Analytics —  is the holy grail for higher ed. (In this post, we’ll differentiate Goals in Google Analytics versus goals in a more general sense with the use of a capital letter G.)

A Goal represents a completed activity, also known as a conversion. They’re the elusive yet low-hanging fruit, and one of the most important things you can define and configure in your Analytics account.

In our work with many types of colleges and universities, we find that nearly everyone is using Google Analytics, most are familiar with Goals, and many even have created some within the tool. Very few institutions, however, are getting actionable or meaningful data out of them.

Four reasons why Goals are difficult for higher education.

1. Out of the box, no Goals come with Google Analytics. Someone must create them.
2. Before Goals can be created, your institution’s stakeholders need to weigh in on what important objectives can and should be tracked.
3. The most useful Goals — based on event tracking or destination URLs — often require additional configuration. Web managers may need to implement analytics tracking code on third-party systems or modify web forms to track destination URLs in a meaningful way. Event-based Goals require event tracking to be implemented on key actions before they can be used for Goal creation.
4. Once implemented, some time needs to pass before data is collected. Then analysis is required to make the Goal meaningful.

Difficult, but not complicated.

None of this is all that complicated. But all too often, it doesn’t all come together neatly. Rarely does one person at a college or university have the skill set to accomplish all of these tasks. Also rare is the extra time that the web team needs to push the agenda for Goals, especially when they know that the payoff of actionable data is months down the road and more immediate needs are staring them in the face.

There are a host of places in Google Analytics that Goals (remember, this is also known as conversions) surface in reports. These tend to be the actionable things that we can analyze to help the web work better.

In thinking about how to make Goals easier, three things can help:

1. Understand good tracking hygiene. If your basic Google Analytics data has gaps or is in too many silos, Goals can be harder to leverage.
2. Use the tools that can help make the event-based and destination Goals work best. This means implementing event tracking (Hello, Google Tag Manager!), understanding how to work with developers to structure URLs for destination Goals, and leveraging things like virtual pageviews to help with goals and funnels.
3. Review some simple, real-world examples of the Google Analytics features that can make Goals work to help cut through all the heft of Google Analytics and get to the steps needed to bring it together.

Take a deeper dive.

In a couple of weeks, I’m presenting a two-part webinar series on Google Analytics and Tag Manger for Higher Education. My goal is to help make all of this easier for your college or university. 

The first session focuses on those key areas where higher ed can do more with Google Analytics — including Goals. The second session dives into Google Tag Manager, which helps with event tracking in particular, in addition to how analytics code is managed.

I hope you’ll consider joining me as we work together to make Goals a cornerstone of analytics work on higher ed websites.