Google Analytics: Do 'Goals' actually work?

[IndustrySteve]

Hi,

Hoping someone can clarify this for me. I've set a goal up whereby the rule is to pick up all pages with "Thank-you" in the destination URL (regular expression). So, when someone fills out a form, it will count as a lead. I'm about 8 weeks in to the campaign now and measuring the last 4 weeks I've had a total of 30 goals completed. I have two issues with this and I really hope someone can help clarify:

1. Using a custom report I can see that I've actually had 52 Visits to the Thank-You pages, 49 Unique Visits and 60 pageviews. Where is Google getting the goals from?

2. I have 51 leads in my inbox from the campaign so far. So, much closer to the above stats in the custom report than in the Goal report. Why is this?

Thanking you in advance!

[danatanseo]

Hi Steve,

I believe this discrepancy could be happening because in order for a "goal" to be completed, the analytics script must complete load on the "Thank You" page. Sometimes a user will "x" out of a page before the script can completly loading, so that lead doesn't get counted as a completed goal. Similar discrepancies happen when viewing conversion stats in Adwords versus Google Analytics.

If the previous scenario is not the cause, it could be something in the setup of the goal that isn't attributing a goal properly. Is there anything "in common" about the visitors' paths for the ones that weren't counted? Perhaps investigate that to see if perhaps you've included some steps that maybe don't need to be there...or if your "required" step can somehow be bypassed but still lead to a conversion.

Hope that helps a little!

Dana

[IndustrySteve]

Hi Dana,

Many thanks for prompt reply. I've actually heard this a few times now about people clicking X before the script can load. Would this also affect the recorded visits to that page as well? Also, the code is sitting just before , so perhaps moving it up to the top may help?

Welll the set up is very simply, there are no steps to it, for a goal to happen the user must hit a page with Thank-You in the destination URL. That's it! The only way to get to these pages is via a form and they're not indexed either. I'll look in to your question regarding commonality in visit paths, interesting suggestion and worth looking in to.

Stephen

[Dubs]

Instead of using Reg Ex, can you set the goal using the head match instead?  My understanding is that the head match will consider all url's that begin with the /thank-you.  Google Analytics is constantly making updates to their interface, it appears the match type is now call "Begins with" instead of head match.

I tried to attach a cropped screen shot

screen1.jpg

[IndustrySteve]

Hey Dubs,

Thanks for the reply. Much appreciated. Forgive me for being a little naive, does this mean the URL needs to begin with "thank-you" then? This would be ideal but the problem is there are over 80 forms and each have different mechanisms of working, which will result in various URL outputs. All I know is that in every outcome, "thank-you" will feature in the URL. Does this make sense?

Steve

[Dubs]

can you private message me the site's URL or the thank you URL?  I'm a little lost.  You have + 80 forms pointing to the same "thank you" or confirmation page?

[IndustrySteve]

Well, there are about 40 products, out of which there are two different types of forms. So for example "red shoes" product page will go to either:

www.website.com/red-shoes/call-form/Thank-you

www.website.com/red-shoes/Info-Form/Thank-you

Repeat that across all products. The urls start to look a bit messy as you start to see all of the CLID (PPC) and other strings after the thank-you section of the URL. This is why I'm trying to just use a the regular match to say "Yeah, it contains Thank-you somewhere in the URL". Does this make sense?

[garfield_disliker]

Did you ever figure this out? My hunch is that Dana's first suggestion might be the cause.

Are you sure the regex is set up correctly? It might help to export the list of URIs from analytics and test your regex against them in some kind of text editor w/ regex support, e.g., sublime text.

Did you get multiple leads from the same person? Google Analytics will only count a goal completion once per visit—so if the same person converts several times in one visit, you'll only see a single goal completion for them.