Trying to figure out how to better engage your communities online? Wondering why people don’t seem to be finding or participating in the action items on your website? Good web design and engaging content are obviously key. But if people are getting lost before they reach your action, Google Analytics can help, with their Goals and Funnels features. It sounds wonky, but they’re actually easy to set up, and can be invaluable for helping your organization’s website direct visitors to take a substantive action.

So what are Goals and Funnels?

• A Goal can be any page on your website that you want to drive people through: an email sign-up form, a petition, an action center, an event invitation, an informational page or even PDF downloads.
• Funnels are the paths you expect people to take to get to those end goals. Tracking them can help determine where people might be getting lost on the path to action.
• Conversions, which are tracked in your reports, are the people who reach the goal and take the desired action, whether it’s sending a letter to their representative, signing up for an event, or simply spending enough time on the page to read the content.

Setting up Goal tracking in your Google Analytics account is easy, and the Google Analytics Help articles on it have step-by-step instructions explaining how to track Goals, set up Funnels, and understand the conversion reports. The information you get back can give great new insights into how people are interacting with your content, and ideas for increasing your organization’s online engagement and overall impact.

Cross-posted from the NOI Education Fund's Tip of the Day