How To Create Google Analytics Goals

Looking to optimize your website for conversions? To do that, you'll need to track conversions by setting up a goal in Google Analytics. This could be tricky for beginners, but what if there's an easier way?

This is where MonsterInsights WordPress plugin comes in handy. It automatically tracks conversions on your website and provides actionable insights so you can see what's working and what's not.

In this tutorial, we'll show you how to create a goal in Google Analytics to track conversions using two methods. And also highlight how MonsterInsights addons can streamline the process.

There are 2 ways to track conversions that we'll go over in this post. If you'd like to skip ahead to your preferred method, just click here:

MonsterInsights is the best WordPress Analytics plugin. Get it for free!

The easy way of tracking conversions using MonsterInsights
The manual way of setting up goals in Google Analytics

First, let's take a look at what goals are and why you might need them.

What Are Goals in Google Analytics?

Goals in Google Analytics allow you to track specific user interactions on your site. These user interactions can be anything including form submissions, product purchases, collection of leads, and more.

When a website visitor performs the specific action that you've defined as a goal, Analytics records that as a conversion. You can check out our detailed guide about the difference between Google Analytics goals and events.

Let's take a look at how to set up goals in Google Analytics and why MonsterInsights is much easier to use.

Video Tutorial

Go through our video tutorial for all the steps. And you want, continue reading to check out our written step by step guide.

How to Track Google Analytics Goals Using MonsterInsights?

MonsterInsights is the best Google Analytics WordPress plugin available. It allows easy event tracking and displays reports right in your dashboard to see the conversion rate.

This way you can make data-driven decisions, analyze which event as goals are performing better, and make appropriate changes.

One of the biggest advantages of using MonsterInsights is that you don't have to manually set up goals in Google Analytics. It does this automatically for you!

And its made possible through the amazing addons offered by MonsterInsights. Let's take a look.

Track eCommerce Conversions

MonsterInsighs eCommerce Tracking addon gives you a complete view of how your audience is interacting with your store.

It sets up goals for your eCommerce store automatically and gives you a report on the conversion rate, transactions, revenue, top-performing products, average order value, and much more.

eCommerce-Report-top-products

That's not all. With MonsterInsights, you see the referral sources from where your visitors are accessing the store and the exact revenue they send your way.

Using this data, you can now push your products and promote your store where it matters.

eCommerce-Report-user-behavior

You can also measure the total Add to Carts and Removed from Cart to track conversions. This way you can see if your goals on track and make the right decision.

Easy Forms Tracking Addon

Now if you have several forms on your website, creating goals for each of them can be a difficult and time-taking task.

But using MonsterInsights Forms Tracking addon, you can track each form without messing with any code or going through the manual set up process of creating a goal.

The WordPress plugin tracks all the forms that are on your website and displays their impressions, conversions, and conversion rate in a simple report.

forms tracking addon

As you can see, goal tracking is simple with MonsterInsights. Now, let's look at the manual process of creating a new goal in Google Analytics.

How Do You Set Up Goals in Google Analytics?

Once you know how to add Google Analytics to WordPress, you can set up goals in Google Analytics by following these steps:

Step 1. Sign in to your Google Analytics account and select the website for which you'd like to create a new goal.

google-analytics-property

Step 2. In the left panel, click Admin and in the View column, click Goals.

goals-in-view

Step 3. To create a new goal, click the +New Goal button.

click-new-goal

Step 4. Now you'll be prompted to enter a description and the details of your goal. You can enter a suitable name and choose the right goal type.

Which Goals are Available in Google Analytics?

You'll see four goal types in Google Analytics. They are:

Destination: You can choose this goal type if you want to treat a pageview or screen view as a conversion.
Duration: You can measure user engagement by treating time spent on a page as a conversion.
Pages/Screens per session: This is another way to measure user engagement. You can measure the number of page views per session as a conversion.
Event: You can treat user interaction like button click, video play, form submission, ebook download as a conversion.

Let's specify the name of your goal as Form Submission, and choose the Event type.

After you've chosen your options, click Continue.

Now you'll be asked to enter the goal details and event conditions. For Category, you can enter forms. And for Action, you can add Conversions.

If you're using a forms plugin like WPForms and have multiple forms on your website, you'll have to enter form ID for each, like wpform-form-187846.

As for the Value option, you can leave it as it is.

But if needed, you can create monetary value for conversions. For example, if you're setting up the goal for tracking ecommerce transactions, you can specify the goal value to measure the revenue each transaction generates.

You can also click on the Verify this Goal link if you want to measure how often this goal would have converted on your data from the past 7 days.

Once you've entered these details, click Save.

You've successfully created a goal in Google Analytics.

That's it!

We hope you enjoyed our article on how to create a goal in Google Analytics to track conversions. You might also want to check out our guide on tracking links and buttons in WordPress.

And don't forget to follow us on Facebook and Twitter for more useful Google Analytics tutorials about tracking.