Google Analytics Reports & Goals
Let’s think about the answer that these reports are there to help us figure out.Essentially, this is all about the results.This is all about answering that big, giant question:what are the results of all of my user’s actions?That’s what the Conversions Reports are thereto answer.Now, let’s first talk about where we find them.Of course, if we’re in the home-screen here when you first come into your Google analytics.You’re going to find them under conversions section here.Remember, they’re here to answer what results.So that’s why you see goals, because that’s an intended result that you would set-up.We’ve got eCommerce of course, the dollars and cents,all the transactions that are coming through.We’re even going to show you some multi-channel funnel reports, which I’m going to introduce you to in this lesson.We won’t go too much into detail, but they’re pretty interesting.So, I want you to see part of that as well.First up though, let’s talk about goals in Google analytics.So, we’re going to come into this conversions report,we’re going to go to goals, I’m going to point out some of my favorite ones, that I think you’re going to use more than others.First, will be goal URLS.Now, the goal URLs report, this essentially tells you when the goal is achieved.And again, we’re going to go into a whole understanding results section in this course,so don’t go too much into details here.But from a high level, this basically says,whenever you set that goal, whenever that goal actually fires,whenever Google analytics actually records the goal.It’s going to tell in this column here,what page they were on.So, that’s pretty interesting.So, for example, you could set a goal when somebody clicks on a certain type of link and you would know what page they were on.For example, if you’ve got a lot of blog posts that are sending out a lot of links to your salespages, or to your Shopify stores,or your affiliate sites, or whatever it is that you’re tracking.You can actually set up goals to say wait when they fire that click, then go ahead and fire the goal,then you’ll have a nice list of blog posts that are sitting here.Which blog posts are causing better results?You could do this same thing when you have lead generation forms.And what page are they on when they actually become a lead.So this goal URLs can be really, really interesting.Now, equally as interesting,is what happens when they’re actually coming to completing that goal.So this reverse goal path, actually tells you not only the step they were on when they completed,which is this first column here.But then it’ll tell you, the page before that,and the page before that,and the page before that.Actually goes three steps deep.So you can see all three steps there.So in this case, before this particular goal was completed on your info.html,they were on the basket, but before that they were on store, and before that they were on the register success page.So you get a little idea of how they actually went to achieve the goal.Which is really nice.Next up, is the funnel visualization goal.Now, this actually shows you, and you do have to set this up, it requires a little bit of set-up,and we’ll talk about this in the understanding results section.But here, you’ve got step one cart,step two, billing,step three, payment,step four, review,finally, goal achieved.Which is the purchase complete down here.So this goal is actually the purchase completed goal, but it was set-up to describe itself to report itself in the form of a funnel.So you can see the steps up to and including the final goal.So, this report really, really, useful.Now, goal flow.This is the first flow report that you’ve seen me sort of really point out, since we first talked about just the idea that flow reports even existed, way back in the beginning of this course.But the goal flow report, I think is one of those reports you will actually use more often than not.Specifically, the flow reports.So, this same exact funnel, with all the steps,the cart, the billing and shipping, the payment,the review, and then finally the purchased completed.It’s the same thing.It’s not as easy to see what the percentage break-offs are from each one of these,as it is with the funnel visualization reports,that’s really useful for that.This is literally there to see stuff like this.So you see, oh they were on the cart,and you naturally think oh, they all got to go to billing and shipping, and then they’re going to go to payment.But here you can see, a bunch of people are actually flowing around billing and shipping and going directly to payment.That’s interesting.Is that what you’d expect?There’s a lot of people going from cart that come from cart and hit review cart all of the sudden.How’s that happening?And, you can adjust this.And you saw this when we first talked about flow reports,you can pull this report up and show even more connections, and at that point,once you do that.Let’s go ahead and get that to take here.You can see flow back.So if I click on this, you can actually seethe flow reports that are coming through cart,they go to billing and shipping,then they go back to cart,they’re looping back, here, payments,back to cart.Why is that happening?Technical glitch?Is it just the person wasn’t sure and there was some hesitation?So you’ll get really used to using these reports to literally see the flow, through your goals.Because a lot of time, some of it’s not what you’d expect to happen.Sometimes it is, but a lot of times it’s not.This flow reports is really useful for that.
What “Analytics” is…
All right, first, let’s talk about what Analytics is and that this is really going to be more conceptual.But I think it’s an important thing to think about.When you’re, whether it’s for yourself for your client or for your business or your boss, whoever it is,typically what’s happening is they got money that’s pouring in to something,whether it’s a sales funnel, an Ecommerce site,something else that has some sort of customer journey,maybe content marketing, affiliate sites, SAS, whatever.You’ve got money pouring into it,setting eyeballs and traffic to it,something happens with everyone going on and that spits out, hopefully, more money.Sometimes, unfortunately, it ends up being less money.But either way, the trick is, you know the results,you know how much you’ve spent and how much is going in that’s coming from the ad platforms,you, generally speaking, most people know the results,but what they don’t know is the how,and that’s what’s important about using Google Analytics.One, is yes, it can tell you the results,but let’s be honest, people are checking their bank accounts all the time,they’re checking how many sales do we make all the time,they’re checking their carts all the time.There’s lots of ways to figure out the end result of something.What they don’t know is the how.And that’s where Analytics really helps you to shine.You’ve got results and how, that’s what Analytics is.And what happens is, instead of this whole black box,which is what most people start with,many of our clients, to this day,they’ll come to us making lots of money and they have no idea how they’re doing it.That’s not abnormal and you’re going to hear that story over and over and over again.Maybe you’re already in that position yourself.What happens is, instead of saying okay,money’s pouring into a black box,something happens that results come out,you’re going to use Google Analytics to shed some light on the subject and actually show, remove that black box,and say hey, let’s lift this thing up and let’s see exactly how this is happening.Oh, we’re setting a much of money to blog post and then of those blog posts,’cause maybe we’re doing like a content marketing play from Facebook or something like that,of those blog posts, 10% of them become leads.Of those leads, 85% see the offer.Maybe the offer’s the thank you page in that example.Another 10% will actually be retrieved through email and they come back in to see the offer page.And of those people who see the offer page,10% of those click through to the cart.Of those, 25% click through to the thank you page and you’re hearing me say all these numbers,right, 10%, 25, 85, and the number itself is incredibly useful now, because it shows us a map,a road map of how this is changing into this.And again, hopefully it’s changing into a lot of this.The idea is that Analytics will help you measure the how and when you think about the how,it’s not just number of people who saw the blog post and number of people who saw the lead,but it’s actually behaviors.That’s how I ask that you think about this.Don’t just think about it in terms of numbers,though that’s obvious; you’re going to see a bunch of numbers when it comes to tools like Google Analytics.But think about those numbers as what’s behind the numbers and behind the numbers, it’s behaviors.You’re actually seeing number of eyeballs on this page,and then switched over to this page.And you’re seeing the behavior of somebody saying,yes, I’m interested enough and whatever the content was here to take the next step to whatever this next step is, in this case as a lead.You’re seeing behaviors.On the blog post, you’ll see behaviors like scroll.You’ll be able to see behaviors like how much time they spent on certain elements, did they leave comments,if that’s important to you.You can measure all sorts of interactions band behaviors that are happening on the site using Google Analytics.It does require setup to do that,which is what most people, again,don’t realize about Analytics,and this is why you’re here, right,to help get this tool set up and actually give you a more useful truth that you can look at.Instead of this whole black box set up,you’ve got something that shows you a little bit more of a roadmap.Then what happens is with Analytics,you’ll get that first stage,what we call that good enough to get going stage.So you get good enough to get going you get your basics in place,then you do the drill downs and you say,okay, well, how are they interacting and this is where you might do scroll on a blog post or certain sections maybe on an offer page or product detail page if you’re using an Ecommerce site,you’ve got product detail page.Are they interacting with all those photos you have?Are they watching the video demonstration?Well, you can measure for those behaviors.You can do a lot more details on how they are using that particular page to get to the next step.So this helps to optimize everything that’s happening here once you have visibility into what those behaviors are.So when you think about, okay,what goal do I have to actually use Google Analytics, it’s this.You want to know results, of course, everybody does.But those are fairly in front of you already.What you really want to know are you achieving those results.And you need both, we need both,but the how is what Analytics,was where Analytics really, really shines.That’s the overall of why we are using Analytics and kind of what Analytics is for.
