If you ever wondered about goals in Google Analytics, about how to set one up and why would you do it, here is some info on that. I’ll assume you have Google Analytics installed on your website and this is not the first time you hear about it.

It’s going to be basic operations that any person with a minimum knowledge of web browsing can perform.
How to set up a Goal in Google Analytics

Before you access the data for your website you’ll see an edit link in the right side of the name of your website. Click it and on the page that opens you’ll see the add goals link. You can create a maximum of 20 goals divided in 4 sets.

You’ll have the possibility to choose what type of goal you would like to set up. If you didn’t thought about your goals here is the moment to do it. I think that the types of goals that you can set up are very helpful in understanding how to think of your website’s goal.

You can set up a goal for a certain URL, a certain number of visits to your website or a certain pages/visit. And if you think about it this is all that you need. Maybe your goal is to make people read a certain page, or to receive a certain number of visitors. Maybe you’re goal is to keep people on your website for at least 5 minutes.

A great thing is that you can also attach a certain dollar value to your goal. Why this is useful: let’s say that every person that comes to your website and reaches a certain page is worth 5$ to spend for. And from all the persons that reach that page only 10% decide to contact you. Now you do the math and see if it’s worth to spend that kind of money to advertise that page. It’s an interesting way to evaluate your efforts...


Source - http://www.optimizingtheweb.com