Setting up URL Destination Goals in Google Analytics

2.5 minute read. Track visitors who buy something, donate, subscribe, log in or otherwise visit a particular page on your website.

When a visitor to your website converts and ends up on a page that signals the end of the process, you will want to track this conversion using a URL Destination goal.

The best example of this would be ‘Thank you’ pages for purchases, downloads, donations or subscriptions.

Setting up a URL Destination goal doesn’t require technical knowledge, or any big changes to your website. It does require three things:

1. You must have administrative access to your Google Analytics account. Learn about this here.
2. A unique web page (Destination URL) that visitors reach at the end of the conversion process.
3. Creating a new goal and specifying the URL destination in your Google Analytics account.

Let’s look at the last two steps.

A unique web page that marks the end of the conversion process

We use a URL Destination goal to track conversions whenever a visitor sees a unique page at the end of the conversion process. When a conversion results in a visit to this type of ‘finish line’ page, it is best tracked as a URL Destination goal.

Make note of the URL of this unique destination page as the first step in setting up this type of goal.

It’s important to remember that visitors should not be able to reach this page without converting – signing up, donating, buying something from you – you don’t want to record invalid goals!

Create the new goal in your administration panel in Google Analytics

To set up a URL destination goal, you simply create a new goal that tracks when a site visitor reaches your ‘Destination URL’.

Here’s the step by step:

Log in to your Google Analytics account.If you are tracking more than one website in your account, make sure you are editing the right site : you can see these sites on the orange banner.

Click on the ‘Admin’ button at the top of the page.

Once you have clicked on Admin, you will see at least one (maybe more) ‘views’ (also known as ‘profiles’), which are different ways to track your website using the same code. Click on the one to which you want to add a goal.

On the next screen, click on the ‘Goal’ tab (between Users and Filters)

Click on ‘Create a Goal’If you see a number of confusing options under headings like ‘REVENUE’, ‘ACQUISITION’ or ‘INQUIRY’ ignore these and click down to the last option, ‘Custom’. If  you don’t see this many options, move on to the next step: choose ‘Destination’ goal.

Give   your goal a name you, and anyone you share the account with, will remember. In this case we are going to use ‘Email subscription’   Under ‘Type’ choose ‘Destination’ and click on ‘Next Step’

 

Enter the last part of your URL in the ‘Destination’ field, without putting in your domain name.

Here’s an example:

If the full URL of my email subscription thank you page is : http://www.mysite.com/email–signup/thank–you

I would simply enter /email-signup/thank-you

in the Destination field. You can leave off the full web address, and start the Destination with a leading slash :   /

You can leave it set to the default of ‘Equals to’.

You don’t need to set a ‘Value’ or ‘Funnel’ at this point – you can always set them later once you’re using Google Analytics in a more sophisticated way.

Click ‘Create Goal’ and you’re done.

You can ‘Verify’ this goal if you like – Google Analytics checks visits to the destination page for the last 7 days of traffic. Note that you won’t get any results if you have just set up analytics, or if you haven’t had any visits to that page in the last week.

Now you’re tracking, as a goal, visitors who have reached a unique page at the end of the process of signing up for your email list.

Here are more examples of Destination Goals in the Google Analytics documentation:

Continue on to the next lesson, on how to set up Threshold goalsThreshold goals