Goals for URLs and Ecommerce

The URL Destination goal is a type of goal you use for determining visitor activity to a specific page on your site. You can also use this type of goal to determine visitor activity to key ecommerce pages (such as a shopping cart receipt page). Since you might also expect visitors to view an additional series of pages before reaching the goal page, you can also define a funnel for URL Destination goals.

This article covers the following:

Standard Goals for Fixed URLs
Ecommerce Transaction Page Goals
Dynamically generated or Variable URLs
Identical URLs Across Multiple Steps
Goals for Multiple Criteria
Funnels
Match Types: Head Match, Exact Match & Regular Expression Match
Verifying Correct URL Expressions for Goals

Standard Goals for Fixed URLs

Many websites use fixed URLs for a given webpage. The structure of these pages depends on the web technology used for the site. For example:

http://www.myownpersonaldomain.com/2008/category/name-of-blog-post/

http://www.examplepetstore.com/dogs/food.php

http://www.examplepetstore.com/cats/food.html

To configure goals for these types of URLs:

First verify that the URL for the goal is both unique to that page/goal, and consistent from view to view. 

If the URL is the same across multiple steps in the goal process, see Identical URLs Across Multiple Steps (below). If the URL changes from view to view, or if it has name/value parameters, see the instructions for dynamically-generated URLs.

URL: Enter the request URI part of the goal.

The request URI is that part of the URL that comes after the domain address. Using the URL examples listed above, you would enter:

/2008/category/name-of-blog-post/

/dogs/food.php

/cats/food.html

Case Sensitive: Check this box only in the situation where you want to match only one of two identical URLs which differ only by case (e.g. /contactus.html and /CONTACTUS.html).

Match Type: Use the match type that works best for your purpose. In most situations, the default head match works well. See Match Types below for more details.

Many websites use fixed URLs for a given webpage. The structure of these pages depends on the web technology used for the site. For example:

http://www.myownpersonaldomain.com/2008/category/name-of-blog-post/

http://www.examplepetstore.com/dogs/food.php

http://www.examplepetstore.com/cats/food.html

To configure goals for these types of URLs:

First verify that the URL for the goal is both unique to that page/goal, and consistent from view to view. 

If the URL is the same across multiple steps in the goal process, see Identical URLs Across Multiple Steps (below). If the URL changes from view to view, or if it has name/value parameters, see the instructions for dynamically-generated URLs.

URL: Enter the request URI part of the goal.

The request URI is that part of the URL that comes after the domain address. Using the URL examples listed above, you would enter:

/2008/category/name-of-blog-post/

/dogs/food.php

/cats/food.html

Case Sensitive: Check this box only in the situation where you want to match only one of two identical URLs which differ only by case (e.g. /contactus.html and /CONTACTUS.html).

Match Type: Use the match type that works best for your purpose. In most situations, the default head match works well. See Match Types below for more details.

Goal Value: If you have an imputed value for your page, enter that value in this field. For info on goal values, see About Goals and Funnels.: If you have an imputed value for your page, enter that value in this field. For info on goal values, see About Goals and Funnels.

Ecommerce Transaction Page Goals

Defining goals for ecommerce transaction pages involves coordination with ecommerce tracking setup in your tracking code. While you manually set a URL goal for your shopping cart page, the value of the goal should be retrieved from the actual ecommerce value, not entered manually as you might with other types of goals. In this way, ROI and $Index values for that goal will be calculated from actual site revenue value. In order for this to occur, you must first configure ecommerce tracking for your website. For details on setting up ecommerce tracking for your website, see the Ecommerce Guide.
Once you have defined ecommerce tracking and can verify that the transaction data is being sent to Analytics, configure a URL Ecommerce goal as follows:

• For URL: Supply the URL for your shopping cart. For example:http://www.we-sell-for-you.com/mysite/myCart.asp
• Match Type: Typically, Head Match is the best choice for shopping pages, since shopping cart URLs often append a number of parameters to the end of the URL to pass data to the ecommerce server. You can test your shopping cart to determine the structure of the URL and set the match accordingly. See Match Types below for more details.
• Goal Value: Leave goal value set to 0 in order to ensure that the value for the goal is retrieved from the ecommerce transaction value for the page. If you manually add a value in this field and ecommerce is also configured for the goal page, then every time this goal is converted, the goal value will be the sum of the value entered in this field plus the value of the transaction.

Dynamically generated or Variable URLs

If your URLs include query terms or have parameters at the end, use either Head Match or Regular Expression Match types when entering funnel or conversion goal URLs. Examples of dynamic or variable URLs are:

• http://www.example.com/about/pageWithParameter.html?id=89
• http://www.example.com/sales/JanuaryOffer.html?utm_source=NewsLetterJan&utm_medium=email
• http://sports.example.com/checkout.cgi?page=1&id=002

See Match Types below for more details.

Identical URLs Across Multiple Steps

In some situations, the URL does not change across a sequence of activity. For example, a sign-up process might have the following URL path:

• Step 1 (Sign Up): www.example.com/sign_up.cgi
• Step 2 (Accept Agreement): www.example.com/sign_up.cgi
• Step 3 (Finish): www.example.com/sign_up.cgi

To track visitors' progress through a funnel with the same URL for each step, modify the tracking code to create a virtual URL for each step in the sequence that you want to track. For details on how to use this in your tracking code, seeVirtual Pageviews in the Asynchronous Migration Examples guide, which shows how to do this in all versions of the tracking code. The following example shows how you might fabricate 3 URLs using the asynchronous tracking code:

_gaq.push(['_trackPageview', '/funnel_G1/step1.html']);
_gaq.push(['_trackPageview', '/funnel_G1/step2.html']);
_gaq.push(['_trackPageview', '/funnel_G1/step3.html']);

You would then define your funnel and goal URLs using the ones you created in the tracking code modifications.

Goals for Multiple Criteria

You can define a goal for multiple criteria, such as a visit to two specific sections of your website, or a visit to any page within a sub-directory of your website. To do this, you will use regular expression as your match type. See Match Typesbelow for more details. The following examples illustrate these scenarios:

• use ^/sports/.* to match a goal when any page within the sports directory is viewed
• use sports.html|music.html to match a goal when a user views wither the sports.htm or music.htm pages

Funnels

When you create a URL Destination goal, you also have the option to create funnel for that goal. A funnel is a sequence of pages that you anticipate visitors seeing before they reach the goal. Report data for the funnel appears in the Funnel Visualizations report. See About Goals for more overview information.

Before creating a funnel, keep in mind the following:

• Test the sequence on your website, and make a note of all pages that make up the entire sequence of activities you want to track for the goal.
• The final page of the sequence is the actual goal and its URL be entered in the Goal URL field, not the funnel section.
• The match type you select for the Goal URL also applies to any URL in the Funnels section.
• Omit the domain name of the URL in each funnel step (e.g.http://www.example.com/aboutUs.html is entered as/aboutUs.html)
• If you make the first step of the funnel mandatory, the conversion count for the Funnel Visualization report will include only those visitors who reached the goal via that first step. Otherwise, the conversion count for the goal will be the same in all reports.

To define a funnel:

1. Open or create a URL Destination as goal.
   
2. Select Use funnel and enter the URL for the first page in the funnel for Step 1.
3. Enter a name for that step that you want to appear in the Funnel reports. For example, you might want to use Welcome as the name forwelcome.html.
   
4. To make the first step required, select the Required step checkbox.
5. For additional funnel steps, click Add Goal Funnel Step, and supply the URL and name for each page.
   Note: Remember not to enter the final page of the process in the funnel section, but in the Goal URL field.
6. When you have finished adding pages, click Save Goal.

To verify that the funnel is working, view the Funnel Visualizations reports to see data there.

Match Types: Head Match, Exact Match & Regular Expression Match

There are three diferent match types that define how Google Analytics identifies a URL for either a goal or a funnel. The match type that you select for your goal URL also applies to the URLs in the funnel, if you create one.

1. Exact match—for standard, fixed URLs:An exact match is a match on every exact character in your URL—without exception—from beginning to end. Use this when your URLs for your site are easy to read and do not vary.
   This option requires that the URLs you provide for your funnel or goalexactly match the URLs shown in the reports. There can be no dynamic (changing) information in the URL such as session identifiers or query parameters.
   
   If you are using an exact match for a goal (e.g./shopping/thanks.html), leading or trailing whitespaces in the goal field will invalidate the goal.
   
   
2. Head Match—to eliminate trailing URL parameters:A head match matches identical characters starting from the beginning of the string up to and including the last character in the string you specify. Use this option when your page URLs are generally unvarying but when they include additional parameters at the end that you want to exclude.
   If your website has dynamically generated content, use the Head Match filter and leave out the unique values.
   For example, a URL visited by a particular visitor might behttp://www.example.com/checkout.cgi?page=1&id=9982251615. In this case, the id varies for every other user. You could still match this page by using /checkout.cgi?page=1as the URL and selecting Head Match as your Match Type.
   
3. Regular Expression Match—for matching on multiple criteria:A regular expression uses special characters to enable wildcard and flexible matching. This is useful when the stem, trailing parameters, or both, can vary in the URLs for the same website page.
   For example, if a user could be coming from one of many subdomains, and your URLs use session identifiers, you could use a regular expression to define the constant element of your URL. For example, checkout.cgi\?page=1 will match http://sports.example.com/checkout.cgi?page=1&id=002 as well ashttp://fishing.example.com/checkout.cgi?page=1&language=fr&id=119.
   As another example, you could use regular expressions to set a goal for when any page in a subdirectory is visited: ^/sports/.*.

Verifying Correct URL Expressions for Goals

You can verify that you have written a Goal URL correctly by searching for the page in the Pages report using the exact URL or regular expression you want to use in creating your goal. If you are able to successfully view the pages you expect after doing a search, you can safely assume your URL or expression will work.
Examples

Head Match
Suppose your pet store website has a number of pages in a single directory, and you want to use a head match URL to create a goal only for the fish-related pages, which all have the same structure:

• /supplies/fishFood.html
• /supplies/fishTanks.html
• /supplies/fishTankDecorations.html

To determine whether your head match URI works, go to the Pages report for your site, click the Search button and choose "Begins with" as your search type. To match the URLs above, you would enter /supplies/fish in the search field. If your search returns those pages you expect to match, you can use that same URI string as you goal URL.
Regular Expression Match
Because the Pages report allows regular expressions in the search field, it's a great place to verify whether your regular expression will work as a goal. For example, the Analytics documentation on Google Code has a number of pages that have track as part of the file name. For example:

• gaTrackingVisitors.html
• eventTrackerOverview.html

While many of those files reside in the /tracking directory of the site, some of them don't. In order to set a goal that converts on all visits to pages withtrack as part of their name, a regular expression is required. A search on the Pages reports for this site using the regular expression .*track[^/]*html$verifies that this expression matches all files that contain track and no other files.