A goal is a website page which a visitor reaches once they have made a purchase or completed another desired action, such as a registration or download. Before Google Analytics can calculate goal conversion metrics, you must define one or more goals. A goal is defined with the following information:

• URL for the goal page: Specify a page that can only be reached by achieving a goal. In the case of a registration goal, for example, the goal page might be the Thank You page. If your goal page can be reached by visitors who have not completed the goal, your conversion rates will be inflated.

• The name of the goal: Specify a name that you will recognize when viewing reports. Examples of names you might use include “email sign-up” and “article ABC download”.

• The defined funnel: You may specify up to ten pages in a defined funnel. A funnel represents the path that you expect visitors to take on their way to converting to the goal. Defining these pages allows you to see how frequently visitors abandon goals, and where they go. For an e-commerce goal, these pages might be the first page of your checkout process, then the shipping address info page, and finally the credit card information page.

• The value of the goal: For e-commerce goals, Google Analytics can use the actual value of the purchase. To allow Analytics to do so, leave the Goal Value field blank and set up your purchase receipt page as described in How do I track e-commerce transactions?

  For non-e-commerce goals, Google Analytics uses an assigned goal value to calculate ROI, Average Score, and other metrics. A good way to value a goal is to evaluate how often the visitors who reach the goal become customers. If, for example, your sales team can close 10% of people who request to be contacted, and your average transaction is $500, you might assign $50 (i.e. 10% of $500) to your “Contact Me” goal. In contrast, if only 1% of mailing list signups result in a sale, you might only assign $5 to your “email sign-up” goal.

To set up your goals, Enter Goal Information:

1. Log in to your Google _nalytics account and click Analytics Settings.
2. Find the profile for which you will be creating goals, and click Edit.
3. Select one of the 4 goal slots available for that profile and click Edit.
4. Enter the Goal URL. Reaching this page marks a successful conversion. For example, a registration confirmation page, a checkout complete page, or a thank you page.
5. Enter the Goal name as it should appear in your Google Analytics account.
6. Turn the goal On or Off. This selection decides whether Google Analytics should track this conversion goal at this time. Generally, you will want to set the Active Goal selection to On.

Then, Define a funnel by following these steps:

1. Enter the URL of the first page of your conversion funnel. This page should be a page that is common to all users working their way towards your Goal. For example, if you are tracking user flow through your checkout pages, do not include a product page as a step in your funnel.
2. Enter a Name for this step.
3. If this step is a Required step in the conversion process, select the checkbox to the right of the step. If this checkbox is selected, users reaching your goal page without travelling through this funnel page will not be counted as conversions.
4. Continue entering goal steps until your funnel has been completely defined. You may enter up to 10 steps, or as few as a single step.

Finally, configure Additional settings by following the steps below:

1. If the URLs entered above are Case sensitive, select the checkbox.
2. Enter a Goal value. This is the value used in Google Analytics’ ROI calculations, and can be either a set value for the page, or a dynamic value pulled from your e-commerce receipt page. If the former, enter the amount in the field; if the latter, leave this field blank and refer to How do I track e-commerce transactions?
3. Click Save Changes to create this Goal and funnel, or Cancel to exit without saving.

Having a website that gets found in Google, Yahoo, and MSN, etc. isn’t hard to do, but it can be difficult to know where to begin. Here are my latest and greatest tips to get you started:

1. Do not purchase a new domain unless you have to. Due to Google’s aging delay for all new domains, your best bet is to use your existing domain/website if at all possible. If you’re redesigning or starting from scratch and you have to use a brand-new domain for some reason, you can expect to wait a good 9-12 months before your site will show up in Google for any keyword phrases that are important to you.

1. Optimize your site for your target audience, not for the search engines. This may sound counterintuitive, but hear me out. The search engines are looking for pages that best fit the keyword phrase someone types into their little search box. If those “someones” are typing in search words that relate to what your site offers, then they are most likely members of your target audience. You need to optimize your site to meet *their* needs. If you don’t know who your target audience is, then you need to find out one way or another. Look for studies online that might provide demographic information, and visit other sites, communities, or forums where your target audience might hang out and listen to what they discuss. This information will be crucial to your resulting website design, keyword research, and copywriting.

1. Research your keyword phrases extensively. The phrases you think your target market might be searching for may very well be incorrect. To find the optimal phrases to optimize for, use research tools such as Keyword Discovery, Wordtracker, Google AdWords, and Yahoo Search Marketing data. Compile lists of the most relevant phrases for your site, and choose a few different ones for every page. Never shoot for general keywords such as “travel” or “vacation,” as they are rarely (if ever) indicative of what your site is really about.

1. Design and categorize your site architecture and navigation based on your keyword research. Your research may uncover undiscovered areas of interest or ways of categorizing your products/services that you may wish to add to your site. For instance, let’s say your site sells toys. There are numerous ways you could categorize and lay out your site so that people will find the toys they’re looking for. Are people looking for toys to fit their child’s stage of development? (Look for keyword phrases such as “preschool toys.”) Or are they more likely to be seeking specific brands of toys? Most likely, your keyword research will show you that people are looking for toys in many different ways. Your job is to make sure that your site’s navigation showcases the various ways of searching. Make sure you have links to specific-brand pages as well as specific age ranges, specific types of toys, etc.

1. Program your site to be “crawler-friendly.” The search engines can’t fill out forms, can’t search your site, can’t read JavaScript links and menus, and can’t interpret graphics and Flash. This doesn’t mean that you can’t use these things on your site; you most certainly can! However, you do need to provide alternate means of navigating your site as necessary. If you have only a drop-down sequence of menus to choose a category or a brand of something, the search engine crawlers will never find those resulting pages. You’ll need to make sure that you always have some form of HTML links in the main navigation on every page which link to the top-level pages of your site. From those pages, you’ll need to have further HTML links to the individual product/service pages. (Please note that HTML links do NOT have to be text-only links. There’s nothing wrong with graphical image navigation that is wrapped in standard <a href> tags, as the search engines can follow image links just fine.)

1. Label your internal text links and clickable image alt attributes (aka alt tags) as clearly and descriptively as possible. Your site visitors and the search engines look at the clickable portion of your links (aka the anchor text) to help them understand what they’re going to find once they click through. Don’t make them guess what’s at the other end with links that say “click here” or other non-descriptive words. Be as descriptive as possible with every text and graphical link on your site. The cool thing about writing your anchor text and alt attributes to be descriptive is that you can almost always describe the page you’re pointing to by using its main keyword phrase.

1. Write compelling copy for the key pages of your site based on your chosen keyword phrases and your target market’s needs, and make sure it’s copy that the search engines can “see.” This is a crucial component to having a successful website. The search engines need to read keyword-rich copy on your pages so they can understand how to classify your site. This copy shouldn’t be buried in graphics or hidden in Flash. Write your copy based on your most relevant keyword phrases while also making an emotional connection with your site visitor. (This is where that target audience analysis comes in handy!) Understand that there is no magical number of words per page or number of times to use your phrases in your copy. The important thing is to use your keyword phrases only when and where it makes sense to do so for the real people reading your pages. Simply sticking keyword phrases at the top of the page for no apparent reason isn’t going to cut it, and it just looks silly. (Purchase and read our Copywriting Combo for exact tips on how to implement this correctly.)

1. Incorporate your keyword phrases into each page’s unique Title tag. Title tags are critical because they’re given a lot of weight with every search engine. Whatever keyword phrases you’ve written your copy around should also be used in your Title tag. Remember that the information that you place in this tag is what will show up as the clickable link to your site at the search engines. Make sure that it accurately reflects the content of the page it’s on, while also using the keyword phrases people might be using at a search engine to find your stuff.

1. Make sure your site is “link-worthy.” Other sites linking to yours is a critical component of a successful search engine optimization campaign, as all of the major search engines place a good deal of emphasis on your site’s overall link popularity. You can go out and request hundreds or thousands of links, but if your site stinks, why would anyone want to link to it? On the other hand, if your site is full of wonderful, useful information, other sites will naturally link to it without your even asking. It’s fine to trade links; just make sure you are providing your site visitors with only the highest quality of related sites. When you link to lousy sites, keep in mind what this says to your site visitors as well as to the search engines.

1. Don’t be married to any one keyword phrase or worried too much about rankings. If you’ve done the above 9 things correctly, you will start to see an increase in targeted search engine visitors to your site fairly quickly. Forget about where you rank for any specific keyword phrase and instead measure your results in increased traffic, sales, and conversions. (You can sign up for a free trial of ClickTracks, which easily tracks and measures those things that truly matter.) It certainly won’t hurt to add new content to your site if it will really make your site more useful, but don’t simply add a load of fluff just for the sake of adding something. It really is okay to have a business site that is just a business site and not a diatribe on the history of your products. Neither your site visitors nor the engines really give a hoot!

An effective banner design can make the difference between an unsuccessful and successful banner ad campaign. We have found that the following banner design tips can increase CTRs (click thru ratios) and resulting sales.

1. Eye catching.

The first thing you want to do, is to catch the viewers attention. Try to create a catchy phrase, something that will arouse the interest of the viewer and make him/her curious.

2. Keep it simple.

A rule of thumb is to keep it short and simple. Remembers, the banner is not your website. The text on your banner should be informative and give the viewer an idea of what your website is all about.

3. Relevant content.

Make sure that the content of your banner is relevant to the products/services you are offering on your site. A woman in a tiny bikini would attract the attention of a male surfer and probably get lots of clicks, but when the surfer discovers that you really sell dvds he is sure to leave your site. Thus you may end up with high click thrus, but none sales.

4. If your service is free, tell the viewer.

It turns out that the word “free” increases the click thru rate. If you offer free games download don’t just say “Download games”, say “Download free games”.

5. Don’t lie.

Please make sure that you deliver whatever you promise on your banner. Don’t claim that your web hosting plans are free, when they really cost $50.

6. Link to a specific page.

If someone click the banner, they want to go directly to the information they are looking for (the very reason that they clicked the banner). They don’t want to go to your more general homepage and spend time looking for the information.

7. Aspects of Color.

Many studies have indicated that people respond better for bright colors, such as green, blue, and yellow, or certain color combinations, like a rich yellow on dark blue.

8. Call to action.

Some surfers still need to learn that a banner needs to be clicked on, not just watched at. Make it obvious that the banner is to be clicked.

9. Include your logo and web site url.

Remember that even if a banner don’t get a click it may still increase your name and brand awareness. But don’t dilute the banners punch line or the copy. Often it is best to keep the url and logo together on either side of the banner. The logo should be small and the url can be displayed in small font size.

10. Banner file size.

A banner load before or with the main page text and grab the viewers’ attention immediately, and the smaller it is the faster it load. The ideal file size of a banner is 10kb or less. Decreasing the banner size leads to tradeoffs in animation and the number of colors used.

11. Running time of animated banners.

How long should you make your animated banner run? A typical web surfer spends less than 10 seconds looking at a specific area of the website. Thus the banner must display all its contents within this time.

12. Use several banners for your ad campaign.

You probably don’t know everything about your audience preferences and behaviour patterns, and it is unlikely that one banner will fit all. Start with several banners. As your campaign progress you will come to know which banners are generating higher click thru rates. Track each banners CTR, and if possible conversion rate, and give the banners with higher CTR higher priority.