How to Create a Goal in Google Analytics

Digital marketers use goals to measure how often users complete specific digital actions.

Google describes Goals within Analytics as measures of “how well your site or app fulfills your target objectives. A goal represents a completed activity, called a conversion, that contributes to the success of your business.”

Using this feature correctly is critical to successfully reducing random acts of marketing by aligning desired user actions with your business goals. Defining goals is a fundamental component of any digital analytics measurement plan. Without this information, it’s almost impossible to evaluate the effectiveness of your online business and marketing campaigns.

Analytics Goals fall into one of 4 types:

1. Destination
2. Duration
3. Pages Per Session
4. Event

You can learn more about each of these types here. 

Setting goals is fairly straightforward, so we’ll sum it up below. If you want to really get into the weeds, you can always go on an adventure through the Google Analytics Help Page.

How to Create a New Analytics Goal

First, navigate to your goals.

1. From Google Analyics, select ADMIN 
2. From the View column, select Goals
3. Select + NEW GOAL or select an existing goal
   

You have 3 basic options for creating goals:

Share and import goals

After you have created and saved a goal, you can share it with other Analytics users, just as you can other assets, such as Dashboards, Segments, Channel Groupings, etc. This is a useful feature for coordination across organizational teams. Effective use of goals will maximize marketing dollars and prevent wasted effort. As always, if you have questions we can clarify and streamline this process.