Whenever goals are set up in Google Analytics, there is the option to include a goal value. This will be a set value generated whenever a goal is triggered, but it can be best practice to include these monetary values for a number of reasons.
Firstly, many of the standard Google Analytics reports will include 3 columns for goals – the number of completed goals, the % conversion rate and the goal value. If goals are created without a value, this final column will remain empty and potentially valuable information could be lost.
Goal values are important if you have multiple goals set up and some are more valuable than others. Calculating the value of a goal may be tricky, but it needs to be a figure that seems relevant to the goal being tracked, as well as relative to other goals in the Analytics view.
As Google’s help pages suggest, every action a user takes can be translated into a dollar amount, based on the likely outcomes from the converted action. For example, if 10% of contact form enquiries are converted to sales, and the average sales value is $500, you could then assign $50 (i.e. 10% of $500) to your contact form goal. Or, if only 1% of signups result in a sale, you might only assign $5 to your contact goal.
If you then have multiple goals with differing values and you’re reviewing all goals by traffic source, you may see a different % mix of numerical goals compared to the recorded values, which may indicate where you are getting a higher or lower proportion of the best value goals.
The other main reason to apply a value is that in the Site Content – All Pages report, there is a column showing page value. This is useful to see which pages play a more important part in the goal completion path, since this figure shows the Total Goal Value (and / or Transaction Revenue) divided by Unique Pageviews for the page or set of pages. It can therefore help determine the most important pages in your website that contribute to the goal value.
So, as we have seen in our posts this month, conversion tracking and goals are essential for any website marketer to understand what is being achieved and from where. The goal value is part of that data collection, and for any advertiser where actual ecommerce revenue is not being tracked, the goal values are the next best thing to put a monetary value to the goal completions being achieved.
Check your goal settings and consider adding goal values if there aren’t currently any there. You don’t have to report on these if not required, but it’s better to collect the data in the first place and then build up the trends in your Analytics to see what is being recorded.
If you’d like to know more about goals and goal values in Google Analytics, please contact us for more information.