How to Create Goals
To configure a goal, visit the Goals section in MVMCloud Analytics and click Manage Goals . This page will show all goals existing ones that you have along with a big button to Add New Goal.
Clicking this button will open the Add New Goal view where you can add all the necessary details.
You should select a descriptive objective name that is easy to identify, for example, New Job Application. It can also be helpful to set up a specific naming convention if you have many similar goals. For example, you can use a pattern like Click – Affiliate Link and Click – Partner Site so you can easily find and reference similar goals. You can also add a short description below the name field to help you remember the more specific details or context of the goal.
Goal Triggers
There are many actions that can trigger a goal, however, all triggers are configured in two ways. The first is using automatic built-in triggers that you can select while the default option when visitors is active. As an alternative, you can set goals to be triggered manually. This requires you to add custom javascript, which fires on your website when certain goal conditions are met.
How to automatically trigger goals “when visitors” do something (recommended)
Automatic triggers are the simplest method for setting goals. There are several such methods that you can use without need to add any additional code to your website. You simply select from the automatic triggers shown on the screen:
- Visit the URL (page or group of pages)
- Visits by a page title
- Submit an event
- Download a file
- Click on a link to an external website
- Stay for a certain period of time
Each of the above methods will require you to define a specific action needed to trigger your goal. When using Visit URL (page or group of pages) as an example, you can select one of the following options from the drop-down menu, and then Then set your specific filters in the following text box:
- Contains – This method triggers the goal when a visitor visits a page where the URL contains what you type in the text box.
This option is especially useful when you want to combine a variety of options with a similar theme, such as all contact pages on your website.
For example, typing contact into the text box would trigger the goal if a user visited one of the following pages on your site:
https://example.com/contact.html https://example.com/support/contact/ - Is Exactly – This method allows you to get really specific so that the goal only triggers on the exact URL you enter,
for example
https://example.com/contact/submitted/which can be a page displayed when someone sends a message via a contact form. - Match expression – Expression matching is the most complex method. However, it also allows for the most advanced targeting options.
It uses something called regular expressions or regEx for short, which can be difficult to understand when you first encounter it.
If you are not familiar with regular expressions, we recommend that you learn about regex before using it and test your RegEx patterns extensively.
The patterns you create would be something like this
(. )\/contact\/(. )which in this case would match any page containing /contact/ in the URL, such ashttps://example.com/contact/.
All matching types based on the text patterns described above are followed by a check box so you can decide whether You want your trigger to be case sensitive. With case sensitivity enabled, a trigger defined for check when users visit a certain page title that exactly matches the trigger, Contact Us, would not match a page title of CONTACT US due to the use of all capital letters.
How to Manually Trigger Goals with JavaScript
Generally, you would only use manual triggering for a goal if it is not possible through one of the default options. To manually configure your goals, you need to update your website or application so that it calls some custom JavaScript. The most basic implementation looks something like this:
// Record a Conversion for Goal 1
window._paq = window._paq || [];
window._paq.push(['trackGoal', 1]);
The code above works by telling MVMCloud Analytics that you want to send data to the platform _paq.push([ ]); and then trackGoal sets the type of data to be sent.
From there, MVMCloud Analytics recognizes the unique goal ID defined in the second numeric variable and records the relevant conversion statistics. You can find your
Goal IDs for manual configuration in the first column of the table shown in the Manage Goal section, after you finish configuring your goals in the MVMCloud Analytics dashboard.
Allow Multiple Goal Conversions (or not)
The next step in the goal setup flow allows you to define whether to allow multiple conversions per visit or not. By default, each goal can only be counted once per visit. This is useful for things like confirmation pages newsletter subscription, in which the user can only register for the newsletter once, but can upload the confirmation page several times.
The reverse scenario of counting a specific conversion multiple times is useful for actions where you care about cumulative results. For example, if users can leave multiple product reviews or apply for multiple jobs and you want to keep track each time this happens, update this setting to Allow goal to convert more than once per visit.
Goal Revenue Tracking (optional)
Not every goal will lead to income, but many will, directly or indirectly. The next field in the default goal creation flow is to set a value Optional goal revenue. This doesn't need to be an exact value, nor does it require the goal to be tied to a sale, but it can help you evaluate the return on your marketing efforts.
For example, if you know that on average you sell a $1,000 service for every hundred leads, then on average each lead is equal to about $10. Therefore, you You can set the revenue goal to $10, as the logic follows that by the time you reach your 100th lead, you will likely have made at least one $1,000 sale.
Premium Features for Goals
Some features of MVMCloud Analytics are Premium Features and may be available if you have subscribed to the subscription plan that includes them.
Funnel Settings
This feature allows you to set up the following funnel tracking. This is useful for tracking users' conversion paths before completing a goal. It can help you understand where users, who don't convert the goal, are getting stuck, so you can improve this step and, consequently, improve your goal conversions.
An example can be seen in the figures below that simulate a funnel for a job offer website:
- Job Board – This is the beginning of the funnel where someone views all available jobs;
- Job View – The next step in the funnel is to view any specific job of interest;
- New Job Application – The ultimate goal of this funnel is to get to the job application form.
While your goal metrics track how many people applied for a job in total, you may also want to know what percentage of people applied for a job in total. reached every stage of your conversion funnel. Using the example above, you can see that you are getting a lot of visitors to your job board and job preview stage, but for some reason they don't click through to the application page. This would indicate that there is a possible problem with the employment details or with the final conversion step.
Multi-Channel Conversion Attribution
If the plan you purchased includes this feature, you will also see a simple checkbox option on the goal update page. This premium feature collects more data on all contributing lead sources that led to the completion of your goal funnel. It can follow the users even if they leave your site and return through another channel. For more information about the data collected by this feature, Check out the guide on Multichannel Conversion Attribution.