In Google Analytics, there’s a report called Goal Flow.
First of all, in order to use this report at all, you must have goals set up.
A goal is a certain action you want a website visitor to take on your website.
Watch this video by Google explaining in less than 3 minutes what a goal is:
What types of actions can be goals?
There’s a variety of actions a website visitor can complete that you could define as goals in Google Analytics. But the most common two kinds of actions you’ll want to track as goals in Google Analytics are:
- sign-ups or form submissions
- purchases.
Why set up goals?
Setting up goals makes it easy for you to keep an eye on the most important metrics of your online business.
Goals can provide you with answers to the following questions:
- How many conversions took place within a given date range?
- What was the conversion rate?
- Which marketing campaigns are performing best?
2 types of goals: Macro & Micro
There are two kinds of goals you want to define.
Macro goals
What’s the most important action you want website visitors to take? If you’re selling something online, then the answer is: making a purchase.
So every time a website visitors buys something on your website, that’s a macro goal.
If the primary objective of your website is to collect leads for an expensive service, then a form submission is a macro goal for you.
Micro goals
What are steps people often take before completing a macro goal?
In the case of an online shop, an example of a micro goal could be:
- adding an item to a shopping cart
- adding an item to a wish list
- signing up for a newsletter
- etc
There are no universal rules as to what the right way to define a micro goal is vs a macro goal, it’s all about the context in which these goals are relevant to your business.