Analyzing and Reporting Conversion Rate in Google Analytics
The goal conversion rate of a website is 61.99%.
Ok, good. But what insight you can get from it and what action you can take?
The short and sweet answer is ‘nothing much’.
“Google Analytics adds the conversion rate of each individual goal and then report the sum as the overall conversion rate of the website. “
So if you have set up 5 goals for your website and the conversion rate of each goal turned out to be 20%, then Google Analytics will report 100% conversion rate for your website. So technically you have reached marketing nirvana.
Go home, play video games or do whatever you like because your website can’t perform any better as it is able to convert all the website traffic into sales/leads.
But the reality is that your website can still perform much better.
If you use Google Analytics, you can have a goal conversion rate of 125%, you can have a goal conversion rate of 500% and you can still be massively underperforming.
This is because in aggregate form you will never know which goal has contributed the most to your overall site conversion rate and whether the biggest contributor really has the biggest impact on your bottom line.
For example, consider the following scenario:
- Goal-1: Visit the ‘Newsletter’ page
- Goal-2: Visit the ‘About Us’ Page
- Goal-3: Visit the ‘Order Confirmation’ Page.
- Goal-1 Conversion Rate: 40.49%
- Goal-2 Conversion Rate: 20.19%
- Goal-3 Conversion Rate: 1.31%
In many industries, the goal which has the biggest impact on the bottom line is the visit to the ‘order confirmation’ page (the page which is shown to a visitor when he/she completes a transaction).
Get the E-Book (50 Pages)
Get the E-Book (62 Pages)
The conversion rate of this goal is 1.31%.
If you ignore this conversion rate and instead take the overall site conversion rate into account (which is 61.99%) then you will never know how your website is really performing.
So it is very important that you segment your overall Goal Conversion Rate and look at the conversion rate of each goal.
Analyze and Report Conversion Rate of each Goal
To see the conversion rate of each goal, login to your GA account, go to ‘Goals Overview’ report and then select the goal whose conversion rate you want to analyze from the ‘All Goals’ drop-down menu:
But even after all this segmentation, it is still a sub-optimal way of analyzing conversion rates as you can’t take any action from such data.
Therefore you need to segment this conversion rate further and analyze the conversion rate of each goal for each traffic source.
Related Post: Common Google Analytics Mistakes that kill your Reporting
Report and Analyze Conversion Rate of each Traffic Source for each Goal
Go to ‘All Traffic’ > Source / Medium report in your Google Analytics account and then click on the ‘Goal Set 1’ tab.
You will see a report similar to the one below:
You now get a better picture of your website performance. The questions that you should be asking now are:
What is the conversion rate of my goal named ‘Visit to partner with us page’ for organic traffic and is there any improvement in this conversion rate in the last one month?
In other words, you are determining how the traffic through organic search has impacted one of your website goals.
If the goal conversion rate has gone down with the increase in organic traffic then maybe you are not targeting the right keywords?
What is the conversion rate of my goal named ‘Visit to about us page’ for email traffic and is there any improvement in this conversion rate in the last one month?
In other words, you are determining how the traffic through email campaign has impacted your website goal.
If the goal conversion rate has gone down with the increase in email traffic then maybe you are not targeting the right people?
So instead of analyzing and monitoring the overall conversion rate of the website, you are now analyzing and monitoring the conversion rate of each goal for each traffic source.
Congratulations! You are now looking at the conversion rate data in a much better way than the majority of marketers out there.
But unfortunately, this is still a sub-optimal way of analyzing conversion rate, at least for an analytics ninja.
Analyze and Report Conversion Rate of Each Traffic Source for Each Goal in Each Target Market
“In order to truly analyse and report conversion rate, you need to focus on the conversion rate of each goal for each traffic source and for each target market.”
Many of us run marketing campaigns on a national and international level. So it becomes very important for us to know how each main geo-location (it can be city, state or country) is performing in terms of improving the business bottom line.
So the questions here to ask can be:
What is the conversion rate of my goal named ‘Visit to partner with us page’ for organic traffic in the New York City and is there any improvement in this conversion rate in the last one month?
This can be an important question to ask if your business serves people only from New York City.
Consequently, you won’t be interested in knowing what people from other parts of the country are doing on your website as they are not your target market.
In order to calculate the goal conversion rate of each goal for each traffic source in your target market (like New York City), you need to create and apply an advanced segment (named ‘Traffic from New York City’) which includes only the traffic from New York City.
Then only you can get the true picture of your website performance.
If your target market is only New York city then you should be optimizing your campaigns on the basis of ‘New York City Conversion Rate’ because this is all that really matters for your business.
If you run marketing campaigns on an international level then you need to determine the conversion rate of each goal for each traffic source and in each top revenue-generating country.
You can segment conversion rate further like segmenting conversion rate for new and returning users. There is virtually no limit to which you can segment the conversion rate metric.
The important point to remember here is, to segment the conversion rate metric and not take business and marketing decisions based on the overall website conversion rate.
Other Posts you may find useful:
- 8 Super Awesome Google Analytics Conversions Segments you Must use
- Attribution Modeling Case Study – Introducing Effective Click Optimization
- How to do Attribution Modeling in Google Analytics – Ultimate Guide
- What you should know about historical data in Web Analytics
- How E-Commerce Tracking works in Google Analytics – Ultimate Guide
- GAIQ Test Preparation – Tips from the Veteran + GAIQ Sample Questions
- Is your conversion Rate Statistically Significant?
- Google Analytics Shortcuts: Tricks, Tools, keyboard & APIs
- Social interactions tracking through Google Analytics
- Google Analytics Account Setup Checklist
- Event Tracking – Google Analytics (Simplified Version)
Register for the FREE TRAINING...
"How to use Digital Analytics to generate floods of new Sales and Customers without spending years figuring everything out on your own."
Here’s what we’re going to cover in this training…
#1 Why digital analytics is the key to online business success.
#2 The number 1 reason why most marketers are not able to scale their advertising and maximize sales.
#3 Why Google and Facebook ads don’t work for most businesses & how to make them work.
#4 Why you won’t get any competitive advantage in the marketplace just by knowing Google Analytics.
#5 The number 1 reason why conversion optimization is not working for your business.
#6 How to advertise on any marketing platform for FREE with an unlimited budget.
#7 How to learn and master digital analytics and conversion optimization in record time.
My best selling books on Digital Analytics and Conversion Optimization
Maths and Stats for Web Analytics and Conversion Optimization
This expert guide will teach you how to leverage the knowledge of maths and statistics in order to accurately interpret data and take actions, which can quickly improve the bottom-line of your online business.
Master the Essentials of Email Marketing Analytics
This book focuses solely on the ‘analytics’ that power your email marketing optimization program and will help you dramatically reduce your cost per acquisition and increase marketing ROI by tracking the performance of the various KPIs and metrics used for email marketing.
Attribution Modelling in Google Analytics and Beyond
Attribution modelling is the process of determining the most effective marketing channels for investment. This book has been written to help you implement attribution modelling. It will teach you how to leverage the knowledge of attribution modelling in order to allocate marketing budget and understand buying behaviour.
Attribution Modelling in Google Ads and Facebook
This book has been written to help you implement attribution modelling in Google Ads (Google AdWords) and Facebook. It will teach you, how to leverage the knowledge of attribution modelling in order to understand the customer purchasing journey and determine the most effective marketing channels for investment.
Himanshu Sharma
Digital Marketing Consultant and Founder of Optimizesmart.com
The goal conversion rate of a website is 61.99%.
Ok, good. But what insight you can get from it and what action you can take?
The short and sweet answer is ‘nothing much’.
“Google Analytics adds the conversion rate of each individual goal and then report the sum as the overall conversion rate of the website. “
So if you have set up 5 goals for your website and the conversion rate of each goal turned out to be 20%, then Google Analytics will report 100% conversion rate for your website. So technically you have reached marketing nirvana.
Go home, play video games or do whatever you like because your website can’t perform any better as it is able to convert all the website traffic into sales/leads.
But the reality is that your website can still perform much better.
If you use Google Analytics, you can have a goal conversion rate of 125%, you can have a goal conversion rate of 500% and you can still be massively underperforming.
This is because in aggregate form you will never know which goal has contributed the most to your overall site conversion rate and whether the biggest contributor really has the biggest impact on your bottom line.
For example, consider the following scenario:
- Goal-1: Visit the ‘Newsletter’ page
- Goal-2: Visit the ‘About Us’ Page
- Goal-3: Visit the ‘Order Confirmation’ Page.
- Goal-1 Conversion Rate: 40.49%
- Goal-2 Conversion Rate: 20.19%
- Goal-3 Conversion Rate: 1.31%
In many industries, the goal which has the biggest impact on the bottom line is the visit to the ‘order confirmation’ page (the page which is shown to a visitor when he/she completes a transaction).
Get the E-Book (50 Pages)
Get the E-Book (62 Pages)
The conversion rate of this goal is 1.31%.
If you ignore this conversion rate and instead take the overall site conversion rate into account (which is 61.99%) then you will never know how your website is really performing.
So it is very important that you segment your overall Goal Conversion Rate and look at the conversion rate of each goal.
Analyze and Report Conversion Rate of each Goal
To see the conversion rate of each goal, login to your GA account, go to ‘Goals Overview’ report and then select the goal whose conversion rate you want to analyze from the ‘All Goals’ drop-down menu:
But even after all this segmentation, it is still a sub-optimal way of analyzing conversion rates as you can’t take any action from such data.
Therefore you need to segment this conversion rate further and analyze the conversion rate of each goal for each traffic source.
Related Post: Common Google Analytics Mistakes that kill your Reporting
Report and Analyze Conversion Rate of each Traffic Source for each Goal
Go to ‘All Traffic’ > Source / Medium report in your Google Analytics account and then click on the ‘Goal Set 1’ tab.
You will see a report similar to the one below:
You now get a better picture of your website performance. The questions that you should be asking now are:
What is the conversion rate of my goal named ‘Visit to partner with us page’ for organic traffic and is there any improvement in this conversion rate in the last one month?
In other words, you are determining how the traffic through organic search has impacted one of your website goals.
If the goal conversion rate has gone down with the increase in organic traffic then maybe you are not targeting the right keywords?
What is the conversion rate of my goal named ‘Visit to about us page’ for email traffic and is there any improvement in this conversion rate in the last one month?
In other words, you are determining how the traffic through email campaign has impacted your website goal.
If the goal conversion rate has gone down with the increase in email traffic then maybe you are not targeting the right people?
So instead of analyzing and monitoring the overall conversion rate of the website, you are now analyzing and monitoring the conversion rate of each goal for each traffic source.
Congratulations! You are now looking at the conversion rate data in a much better way than the majority of marketers out there.
But unfortunately, this is still a sub-optimal way of analyzing conversion rate, at least for an analytics ninja.
Analyze and Report Conversion Rate of Each Traffic Source for Each Goal in Each Target Market
“In order to truly analyse and report conversion rate, you need to focus on the conversion rate of each goal for each traffic source and for each target market.”
Many of us run marketing campaigns on a national and international level. So it becomes very important for us to know how each main geo-location (it can be city, state or country) is performing in terms of improving the business bottom line.
So the questions here to ask can be:
What is the conversion rate of my goal named ‘Visit to partner with us page’ for organic traffic in the New York City and is there any improvement in this conversion rate in the last one month?
This can be an important question to ask if your business serves people only from New York City.
Consequently, you won’t be interested in knowing what people from other parts of the country are doing on your website as they are not your target market.
In order to calculate the goal conversion rate of each goal for each traffic source in your target market (like New York City), you need to create and apply an advanced segment (named ‘Traffic from New York City’) which includes only the traffic from New York City.
Then only you can get the true picture of your website performance.
If your target market is only New York city then you should be optimizing your campaigns on the basis of ‘New York City Conversion Rate’ because this is all that really matters for your business.
If you run marketing campaigns on an international level then you need to determine the conversion rate of each goal for each traffic source and in each top revenue-generating country.
You can segment conversion rate further like segmenting conversion rate for new and returning users. There is virtually no limit to which you can segment the conversion rate metric.
The important point to remember here is, to segment the conversion rate metric and not take business and marketing decisions based on the overall website conversion rate.
Other Posts you may find useful:
- 8 Super Awesome Google Analytics Conversions Segments you Must use
- Attribution Modeling Case Study – Introducing Effective Click Optimization
- How to do Attribution Modeling in Google Analytics – Ultimate Guide
- What you should know about historical data in Web Analytics
- How E-Commerce Tracking works in Google Analytics – Ultimate Guide
- GAIQ Test Preparation – Tips from the Veteran + GAIQ Sample Questions
- Is your conversion Rate Statistically Significant?
- Google Analytics Shortcuts: Tricks, Tools, keyboard & APIs
- Social interactions tracking through Google Analytics
- Google Analytics Account Setup Checklist
- Event Tracking – Google Analytics (Simplified Version)
Register for the FREE TRAINING...
"How to use Digital Analytics to generate floods of new Sales and Customers without spending years figuring everything out on your own."
Here’s what we’re going to cover in this training…
#1 Why digital analytics is the key to online business success.
#2 The number 1 reason why most marketers are not able to scale their advertising and maximize sales.
#3 Why Google and Facebook ads don’t work for most businesses & how to make them work.
#4 Why you won’t get any competitive advantage in the marketplace just by knowing Google Analytics.
#5 The number 1 reason why conversion optimization is not working for your business.
#6 How to advertise on any marketing platform for FREE with an unlimited budget.
#7 How to learn and master digital analytics and conversion optimization in record time.
My best selling books on Digital Analytics and Conversion Optimization
Maths and Stats for Web Analytics and Conversion Optimization
This expert guide will teach you how to leverage the knowledge of maths and statistics in order to accurately interpret data and take actions, which can quickly improve the bottom-line of your online business.
Master the Essentials of Email Marketing Analytics
This book focuses solely on the ‘analytics’ that power your email marketing optimization program and will help you dramatically reduce your cost per acquisition and increase marketing ROI by tracking the performance of the various KPIs and metrics used for email marketing.
Attribution Modelling in Google Analytics and Beyond
Attribution modelling is the process of determining the most effective marketing channels for investment. This book has been written to help you implement attribution modelling. It will teach you how to leverage the knowledge of attribution modelling in order to allocate marketing budget and understand buying behaviour.
Attribution Modelling in Google Ads and Facebook
This book has been written to help you implement attribution modelling in Google Ads (Google AdWords) and Facebook. It will teach you, how to leverage the knowledge of attribution modelling in order to understand the customer purchasing journey and determine the most effective marketing channels for investment.
Himanshu Sharma
Digital Marketing Consultant and Founder of Optimizesmart.com
