Setting Website Activity Goals

Another highlight is that AdWords campaigns can be viewed right from with Google Analytics.

And an additional highlight is goal setting. I've set a goal for Web Smart newsletter signups. I just had to add a snippet of code to our sign-up response page. When that page is viewed Google registers a completed goal. I can see my goal conversion rates for any kind of data, in this case for my RSS newsletter AdWord campaign. We don't sell anything directly on the Newfangled site so I don't have a ton of experience with goals and conversion reports--but you can get a lot of detail on e-commerce activity, AdWords campaigns, and any other kind of search marketing effort.

Earlier, I said that I wasn't interested in Click path reports because most session paths are unique. But this reverse click path, based on sessions that fulfilled the goal I set is helpful. Each time a goal is met I can see where the goal-achieving session came from. And in this case I see that my goals are met from many different sessions and pages. It seems that people come from all sorts of paths when they ultimately do sign up for my newsletter. This is good. It means my site is working broadly. But it also means that my paid advertising isn't producing significantly more sign ups than my organic traffic, so that might have an impact on what I decide to spend on my AdWord campaigns.

There's one more view I want to show that's really cool, it's called the Site Overlay view. When this view is clicked it launches my actual website in a new window and overlays it with Google Analytics data. These little bars show me from page to page where people clicked. my home page shows that the preponderance of visitors go to my pricing page. As I click through I can see where the traffic patterns tend. This is just a real fun perspective for viewing site activity.