Tracking Your Website’s Goals with Performance Metrics

by Missy Mandell Tucker

Insights / Digital Marketing / Tracking Your Website’s Goals with Performance Metrics

Is your website performing well?

The first step to find out is to define what “performing well” means to you. What do you want your website to achieve?

Whether it’s purchases, form submissions, or anything else, once you figure out what data you want to look at, there are a number of ways to measure and track your website’s performance.

What are Your Performance Metrics?

Defining website performance can be complex. Take a step back: what is an organizational goal that you want to achieve?

Do you want higher website engagement? You can track unique visitors on your website, social media shares, or page views.

Are volunteer sign-ups your priority? You can monitor form submissions.

Are you looking to grow donations? You can look at clicks on your call to action links and follow-up actions, like following through with a donation after clicking “Donate”.

Tracking Your Website’s Performance

If you are new to performance measurement, start with these 3 Tools to Track Your Website Analytics.

One of these tools, Google Analytics, is popular because it’s relatively easy-to-learn, easy-to-use, is free, and has a user-friendly design.

The most recent update to Google Analytics was the transition to Google Analytics 4 (GA4), which uses event-based tracking instead of session-based tracking.

An event in GA4 is defined as any action a user makes when on a website.

A few examples of events include:

1. Buying something
2. Filling out a form
3. Viewing a page
4. Signing up for a newsletter

GA4 automatically tracks some events, such as site search and link clicks, but you can set up specific events to help you measure if your website users are helping you reach your website’s additional goals.

Setting Up Automatic and Custom Events

If your goal is to increase newsletter sign-ups, then the metric you should review is completed newsletter form submissions. Google Analytics 4 will automatically track all newsletter form submissions on your site, but you can get more information with a custom event.

If you have the option to sign up for your newsletter on your homepage, on the footer of each subpage, and in an alert bar, you can set up custom events to track submissions from each location.

Here’s how you can set up a custom event in your GA4 dashboard:

1. Go to “Configure”
2. Select “Create Event”
3. Define/set up your event conditions
4. Select “Create”

If you’re using Google Tag Manager as well, then:

1. Create a new tag
2. Select the Custom Event you created
3. Specify what will trigger your Google Tag to be fired – for example, the newsletter form submissions from the alert bar, from a specific page, or from the footer

Use Data to Focus Your Website Strategy

Customized event tracking is just one feature of Google Analytics 4.

Using data and performance metrics to analyze your website’s quantifiable goals clarifies what’s working, what’s not, and can help maximize your website’s impact. The ultimate goal is not only to create a website to attract users, but to engage your users in a meaningful way that helps you reach your goals.

Have questions about how to maximize your website’s impact? Reach out to us.