8 Using Google Analytics to Measure Your Contact Form
A blog can be an excellent source of new business. But if you don't have a measurement tool in place, it can be difficult, if not impossible to know which topics are bringing in leads or sales. Did you know you can easily set up a Google Analytics goal funnel to measure your contact form? Today you'll find out which blog posts are creating new business as we look at creating a goal funnel to measure your contact form.
If you're not using goals in Google Analytics, you're not using the powerful web analytics tool effectively at all. Sure, visitors, pageviews and tweets are important measures of engagement, but what about conversion? If there's a business aspect to your blog, a lead or a sale is what brings in money. We should be just as, if not more interested in measuring these things, too.
Measuring Your Contact Form: Getting Started
Setting up goals on Google Analytics is a simple process that should take you no more than five minutes on most blogging platforms. We're going to cover how set up a contact form goal on a Squarespace blog specifically, but the general process is the same for nearly every blogging platform. Before we get started, please note that you must have Google Analytics installed and you must have Administrator access to your Google Analytics profile.
Ok, let's do this. Log in to your Google Analytics account and choose your active website account.
Go to the Analytics Settings page and select the Edit option from the Actions column that corresponds to the website profile you want to measure.
Once you're into your website's profile settings, scroll down to the Goals section and select the Add goal options from the right side of the page.
Google Analytics Goal Information
The first step of the Google Analytics goal setup form is entering information about your goal. Give you goal a name, make it active and position it within your profile. Be sure to select URL Destination as your Goal Type.
Google Analytics Goal Details
Most websites' contact forms behave in a very similar fashion. The web page someone visits directly after submitting the contact form is typically a simple variation of the contact form's URL containing the word Success or True or something like that. Submit a contact form on your own site to determine the specific URL seen after someone submits a contact form. Make note of the URL of this page. This is your destination, or Goal URL.
Contact Form URL:
Example Squarespace Goal URL:
Now, take your goal URL and strip out your domain name.
Place this relative URL in the Goal URL field within the Goal Details section of the goal setup process. Also, make sure you've selected Exact Match as the Match Type.
You also have the chance to use a Goal Value. If you know your average lead or sales value, use that dollar figure here. If in doubt, just use an arbitrary number at first so you can at least see the relative performance of your website content until you know an exact average goal value.
Google Analytics Goal Funnel
Now let's set up a goal funnel for your goal. With a goal funnel, you can specify the sequence of web pages involved in a goal (e.g., Shopping Cart -> Checkout -> Payment Details -> Order Confirmation). Your goal funnel for your contact form process starts on your contact page and finishes on your Goal Url page. Simple right?
Enter the relative URL and a label for your contact page in the Step 1 row. Make sure to select the Required step checkbox. Save your goal.
Congratulations! You've just unlocked the real power of Google Analytics. You now have a goldmine of data pouring into the Goals section of your Google Analytics account.
Which Blog Post Lead to Contact Form Submissions?
Now that your goal is set up, you can start to collect data on which blog posts are converting into contacts. Looking in the Goals section of Google Analytics, you can see which blog posts are getting people to reach out and ask you for more information. You can also create and email custom reports to yourself that tell you exactly how you did each month.
What we've seen today is the step-by-step process on how to set up a Google Analytics goal funnel for a contact form submission on a Squarespace website. Although the steps may vary slightly on your specific website, the general process is the same regardless of what you use to publish your blog or webiste. Find your start and destination URLs and then carefully configure them in your Google Analytics account's goal setup interface.
Spending some time to set up goal funnels like this on your blog/website is the best way to use Google Analytics to its fullest potential. Set up your contact form goal funnel on your site. I bet you'll be surprised by what content is driving new business.
What goals do you have for your website? Could you use the steps described in this blog post to set up a funnel on your site? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.
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Reader Comments (8)
Using google analytic is surely adding some point for my own site's or blog's point of view. I can have all the information on which area my blogs is strong and which area is not. So anyone who are using google analytics can add some advantage for their own use.
A blog of mine like the setting and achieving goals is using analytics too. I just like to see the progress that happen on one of my blogs as I can make a better point from what I lack of on that particular blog.
Thanks for sharing this tip on setting up goals and funnels and how you can use them to measure engagement.
Roberto - You bring up a great point. Everyone gets something a little different from a web analytics tool because every website is different... and so is every webmaster!
Grant - I love seeing your ideas on design and usability. Thanks for coming to check out my thoughts on web analytics and SEO. Two sides of the same coin, right?
Very nice article. Thanks for the screen shots and descriptions. It made it very easy to follow. Creating goals in GA is an important tasks that every website needs.
Any idea on how to achieve this in piwik? (www.piwik.org)
We recently switched and we'd like to measure our contact form as well.
I've never worked with Piwik but I hear you can do pretty much anything you want. Perhaps there are some piwik forums out there that list out the steps? Try looking for anything related to creating goals.
Hey there, cheers for a great article! I've been putting off learning how to use goals and after stumbling across this little gem I'm all set up. Cheers!
Way to go, Brett! Just like anything in life, you have to put in some work if you want to enjoy the best features of Google Analytics. Just a few minutes of effort and you'll never look at your web pages the same way again. Welcome to the club.
Next time you have a few minutes, go to Kaushik.net and pick up some more GA gems.