Google Analytics can be a bit intimidating. But when it comes down to it, we need GA to track everything. Without these numbers GA gives us, we don’t really know how well a website or a paid ad is performing.

There are so many layers to Google Analytics, and you may be missing out on all GA has to offer. Goal tracking on your website, in my opinion, is a must in measuring the success of your business. Goals are objectives you set in GA that you have for your website and GA is able to tell you how many people have fulfilled this goal or objective and the path a user may have taken to get there. I know this may seem a bit confusing - so let me break it down.

When a user performs an action that you defined as a goal, GA records that as a conversion. This conversion is could be 1 of these 4 types:

• Destination
• Duration
• Page Visit
• Event

A destination goal keeps track of anytime a user goes to a specific URL. These are ideal for thank you pages, confirmation pages, or PDFs.

A duration goal keeps track of how many users stay on your website for a specific amount of time. For example, you can set the goal to track a visit that’s below a specific amount of time. 

A page visit goal tracks the number of pages each visitor sees before they leave. 

An event goal is when a desired action is completed. You can track just about anything with events such as external link clicks, downloads, time spent watching videos, social media buttons, etc.

When you set up an event, you define it with a category, action, label and value. You can use as many or as few of them as you want. The event goal will only trigger if the event matches each one you have defined. So if you only define the category, the goal won’t care about the others. But if you define all four, then the event must match for the goal to trigger.