Set the Right Goals to Analyze Car Shoppers’ Behavior

Goal (n) — the object of a person’s ambition or effort; an aim or desired result

You need to set goals that achieve your dealership’s desired result. That means setting up your Google Analytics to not simply count clicks, but analyze shopping behavior on your site. Goals, however, are a little more complex than you may realize.

Goals come in two types that help measure if you’re implementing the right strategies that are steps toward the purchase of a vehicle (your desired end result):

1. Macro-Conversions — Actions on the site when a user submits contact information
2. Micro-Conversions — Actions on the site that Indicate a desire to buy but no lead submitted

Macro and Micro — Both Sets of Goals Have Value

If you focus on setting and measuring only macro or micro-conversions, you’re leaving out a large data set to properly evaluate your website’s performance.

90% + of dealership website visitors don’t submit a lead (macro).

So you need to also track those small steps (micro) along the path to purchase, including traffic, device types, pages visited, user flow, and much more.

Once These Goals Are Set …

You can see where the most conversions originate among:

• Traffic sources
• Geographies
• Days and hours of the week
• Purpose pages
• Devices

You will also acquire insights to see where you need to improve and how to hold your vendors accountable for delivering results.

So, with these goals in mind, let’s get you set up.

Google Analytics Goal Installation 101

Okay. You’re logged into the Google Analytics account that needs these goals.

In the bottom-left corner, click on ADMIN (identified with a gear icon).

Go to the VIEW section.

Click NEW GOAL to begin.

Two things you should consider:

• The first 5 goals are destination goals.
  • This means the person visited a particular page we guided them to.
    • VDPs, schedule service, and thank-you pages are examples
• The next 3 goals are triggered by events on web pages.
  • Mobile phone calls, chats that deliver leads, and texts that deliver leads

For all goals, there’s an easy three-step process:

• Click Custom

• Type Goal Name
  • Remember: first 5 are Destination and final 3 are Event.

• Fill in the Details
  • Destination — toggle to “Begin With” and enter the beginning of the URI (not whole URL) up to the point that all similar pages have a consistent structure.
  • Event
    • 1. 1. Are a little more technical and involve a level of coding or GTM tagging.
         2. Depends on the framework in which the events are named.
         3. Many website providers and third-party plugins have hardcoded certain events they think are valuable. So you can just follow the steps to do so.

• Verify Goals
  • If you have historical data, you can verify the goals work. Hit Save to start tracking your goals.

Reunion Marketing Bonus Tip: Initial Analytics Setup

If you made it this far, you’ve read about our GA Goals recommendations. We want to give you a little bonus for making it through with us.

If you don’t have your Google Analytics account set up, it’s a fairly simple process that should only take 15-20 minutes. You can then set up your goals.

1. Sign up for a Google account.
2. Create your login
3. Go into your ADMIN setup and find your code
4. Send the code to your website provider
   1. Or you can plug it in through Tag Manager or the header of your website
5. Turn it on

And start dominating.

If you’d like to learn more about how we can help you achieve more, sign up for a free demo today.