Goal conversion rate is a metric in Google Analytics that shows the percentage of website visitors who complete a specific action deemed important, such as signing up for a newsletter or making a purchase.
If used correctly, you can get a lot of valuable insights from it and enhance your website performance. In this article, we’ll dig a bit deeper into how to get there.
- What is a goal conversion in Google Analytics?
- How is the goal conversion rate calculated?
- Why is it important to track your goal conversion rate?
- How to use subsegments to analyze goal conversions?
- How to investigate and improve your goal conversion rate?
- Why is my conversion rate low?
- Final Thoughts
Let’s dive in!
What is a goal conversion in Google Analytics?
Let's start from goal conversion. In Google Analytics, a goal conversion is when a website visitor completes an action designated as a goal for the website. This action can be anything from making a purchase to downloading a PDF file.
Simply put, the goal conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who took the desired action.
Almost all websites can benefit from tracking their goal conversion rate. However, there is no one-size-fits-all goal. Newsletter sign-ups can be a good goal for a blog, but an e-commerce websites will probably want to track the rate of purchases.
You can set up your own goals in Google Analytics to track the conversion of your interest. The tool will then ensure the relevant information is collected and reported to you to get the necessary insights.
How is the goal conversion rate calculated?
The goal conversion rate is simply the percentage of conversions over total website visitors. If 2 in 100 visitors sign up for your newsletter, then your goal conversion rate for newsletter sign-ups will be 2%.
Of course, some goals are easier than others. You can expect higher conversion rates for downloading a free resource than for purchasing a product.
It is also worth repeating that goal conversion rate is calculated over visitors, not visits!
Why is it important to track your goal conversion rate?
Your goal conversion is something you really care about- like user registration, purchases, or signing in for a newsletter. Measuring your goal conversion rate allows you to evaluate whether your website is effective- and can tell you that something needs to be fixed.
This is intuitive, really. If you operate a webcommerce website, you want as many of your visitors as possible to become customers. If a lot of people see your website, but very few buy from it, something needs to be fixed.
How to use subsegments to analyze goal conversions?
Using subsegments can help you better analyze your website's goal conversions. With Google Analytics, you can create audience subsegments and apply them to the data you already have on hand. By doing this, you can get a bigger picture of who’s converting so that you can make more informed decisions about optimizing your site.
When creating a subsegment, consider the user types and behaviors that might influence their likelihood of completing goals. For instance, are there browsers or devices that convert better? Are there differences in conversion rates between users referred from search engines versus other sources? You can create targeted strategies for each segment and see what performs better.
How to investigate and improve your goal conversion rate?
Investigating and improving your goal conversion rate is an essential step in optimizing the success of your online business. With Google Analytics, you can easily track your goals and performance to spot improvement areas.
To investigate and improve your goal conversion rate, start by creating Goal Funnels that show how visitors move through a sequence of pages before completing a Goal action.
Once these Goal funnels have been set up, use the Conversion Rate report to monitor progress over time. Analyze which channels drive the most conversions and compare them to other channels to identify discrepancies. In addition, you can tweak different elements that influence the conversion rate. For example, you could redesign the sign-up page on your website and benchmark the conversion rate before and after the redesign. This is possible in Google Analytics and shows whether the new design converts better than the old one.
Why is my conversion rate low?
There is no universal answer to the question. Maybe the user experience needs improvement. Maybe the option to take the desired action is not visible enough- for instance, the users may not realize that a hypertext is a download option rather than an external link. Sometimes, the answer is simpler: the user does not really care for the desired action as much as you do.
The latter case is the hardest to fix but making the website more engaging and building a stronger relationship with your visitors may help. For instance, if you are trying to drive up purchases, you can try making a valuable, well-curated resource available for free.
Final Thoughts
Goal conversion rate is an essential metric for understanding your website's performance. It gives you the insights you need to evaluate your performance and uncover improvement opportunities.
However, implementing goals and optimizing conversion rates can be pretty complex, especially in Google Analytics.
Google Analytics is a complex tool that welcomes you with 70+ dashboards and custom reports. Before getting the hang of it, you’d need to have experience training in using Google Analytics.
This is one of the reasons we built Simple Analytics (what’s in the name?). A simple analytics tool with a straightforward dashboard that gives you the insights you need without having to dig through multiple dashboards and custom reports.
You can check out our live dashboard here to see whether this is something you would like for your website. If so, feel free to