Why It's Critical to Test That Your Google Analytics Goals are Tracking Correctly

Having Google Analytics Goals set up to track the actions and behaviour of your website visitors provides powerful information about the effectiveness of your marketing and your website.

However, if your Google Analytics Goals aren't set up properly, they can inadvertently cause you, or your marketing agencies, to make bad decisions.

Read on to find out more about Google Analytics Goals and how to test if the numbers tracked are accurate.

What are Google Analytics Goals?

Like in real life, Goals in Google Analytics track things that you want to achieve, for example:

1. A view of a key page, such as the “thank you” page that is only seen once someone submits the Enquiry form on your Contact Page, or signs up to your newsletter.
2. A minimum amount of time that you would like visitors to spend on your website
3. A minimum amount of pages viewed by your visitors.

The first type of Goal mentioned above, involving a view of a key page, is called a "Destination" Goal. It is set up using the part of the page URL that appears after your domain.

For example, to track views of this page:

http://clickwinningcontent.com.au/free-google-analytics-101-training-videos/

The Destination Goal is set up using /free-google-analytics-101-training-videos/ (the part that appears after my domain name)

If the same URL is viewed by every visitor, then it is straightforward to set up the Goal. However, if the start of the URL is the same, but more characters are added after it (which is often the case for eCommerce websites), then you need to change the setting to “Begins with". (If you're not sure about setting up your own Goals, speak to your web developer or send me a message).

Having incomplete data is worse than having no data at all, so you need to test that your Goals are tracking correctly

If your Google Analytics Goals aren’t set up properly, you’ll get inaccurate information about the results from your marketing activities and the quality of your landing page. This may mean that you waste time and money, particularly if you’re using the Goals to optimise for Conversions in your AdWords Campaigns.

How to test if your Google Analytics Goals are tracking correctly

Once you’ve set up a URL Destination Goal, the best way to find out if it is tracking correctly is to do a test. My recommendation is to use the Real Time stats. Go to 'Real Time' on the left navigation of Google Analytics, then click Conversions at the end of the list underneath.

Go to your website and submit the form that you are tracking and see if the Conversion shows up in the Real Time results (note that if you've filtered out your own traffic from Google Analytics then this option won't work!).

Another option is to wait until enquiries/sales come in, and then go to Analytics to check the number of Goals tracked. You can see this under Conversions > Goals > Overview (with the date range set to the right time period, the same number of enquiries or sales should have been tracked as those you received).

If you have eCommerce Tracking set up, look at the number of transactions and dollar value tracked and check that it aligns with the actual value of orders received for the same time period.

Read more about Ecommerce Conversion Tracking.

If you’ve set up Goals and imported them to AdWords as Conversions, test the Conversion by choosing one of your least expensive keywords, search for it, click on your ad and follow through the steps to complete a conversion.

Tip: Google Analytics data isn’t tracked in real time, so you may need to wait a few hours until the Goals show up in your account. If you look the next day, it should appear if the tracking is working.  Note though there can be a delay in Goals being imported to AdWords as conversions.

Need help with AdWords and Google Analytics Conversion tracking? Send a message via our contact page.

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About the Author

Melinda is the founder and co-owner of Click-Winning Content and is a Premier Google Partner with over ten years of AdWords experience. She provides consulting, training and management services to help Australian business owners maximise their investment in Google AdWords & use their Google Analytics data to improve their business performance.