We currently have set two conversion goals on the analytics view for the Mason core website (www2.gmu.edu):
- Undergraduate application click-throughs
- Graduate application click-throughs
Why?
Although we can already see in our reports how many people are clicking-through to outbound links (including the online applications), creating them as goals unlock some additional information in Google Analytics
Note that these conversion goals were set-up very recently, so there is not yet much data to work with. More time will yield better data.
Conversion Rate by Segment
Setting-up conversion goals allows you to see how different segments perform in relation to your goals. For example, you can see conversion rates for traffic:
- arriving on a particular landing page
- arriving from particular acquisition sources
- originating from a particular country
- etc.
This enables us to tell which landing pages, acquisition channels, referring websites, etc. are best at generating which conversions.
Examples
Account: Mason Office of Communications and Marketing 01
Property: www2.gmu.edu
View: [PROD] www2.gmu.edu – default 2.0 (2017-06-25)
Date Range: Oct 23, 2017 – Oct 25, 2017
Segment: Off-Campus
Conversion: Goal 1: Undergraduate Application Click-Through
Acquisition Channel
Report: Acquisition -> All Traffic -> Channels
Geographic
Report: Audience -> Geo -> Location
Note the goal conversion rate for visitors from China and Pakistan.
Referrals
Report: Acquisition -> All Traffic -> Referrals
Note the conversion rates for traffic referred from the Volgenau and School of Business websites. (Referrals from Admissions and The Common App are higher, but that’s to be expected.)
Extend the report to show additional rows of data.
Show rows: 50
Note the conversion rates for traffic referred from the honors college website, Mason online website, and CVPA website.
Page Values
Assigning goal values to your conversion goals allows you to see see ‘page values’ for individual pages, which indicate how well individual pages are working to move users toward completing the goals you have defined. See more info on how page value is calculated here: Google Support: How Page Value is calculated.
Example
Report: Behavior-> Site Content -> All Pages
Review page values for top pages.
Filter: Include -> Page Value -> Greater Than -> 0.10
Review page values for best-performing pages.