This is a Guest Post by Scott Magdalein who blogs over at ReadScott.com.
One of the most useful tools in the Google Analytics toolbox is the ability to set and track Funnels and Goals.
Goals are specific pages or actions you want site visitors to hit or click-to. Funnels are the tracks or courses of action you want your site visitors to take to get to those Goals.
For example, if you have a contact form you want visitors to fill out, you’d set up a Funnel or process to get people to the Goal or page with the contact form. Sometimes they’re simple and sometimes they’re much more complicated and involve several steps to reach a Goal.
John (@human3rror) posted an article here on ChurchCrunch about a simple step you can take to garner more donations through your website. That particular post was about designing a better website that calls more attention to the places you want (ie. a donation button). It’s a good post. Skip over to read it when you’re done here.
But, before you redesign your site, a good practice would be to set up some Google Analytics Funnels and Goals to measure whether the problem is design or copy or whatever. This is a good run-through of how to set them up.
Once they’re up and running, you’ll have a much better feel of exactly what needs to be redesigned, where your ‘calls-to-action’ need to be placed in the design, how your website copy might need to change, and how to make the Funnel easier and the Goal more enticing.
[Image from Tanaka]
Mikes says
I really want to set up google analytics but to no avail. I don't know how. waaaaaaaaaaaaahhh. you guessed it, I'm not a technical person and surely my nose bleeds everytime i try to look at it.
human3rror says
We can help! put something in the forum and we'll discuss!