Settings
As long as your script has been implemented and your cookie settings are correct, you are ready to start collecting analytics data. However, there are other settings that can improve your data, so let’s look at some of the additional settings.
Tracking settings
Go to “Data sources/Analytics” and then select “Settings/Tracking” in the sidebar menu.
The first setting is whether or not to track page views. The default setting is “Always”…
…but you can also choose “Never” and “With consent”, which means with cookie consent. We explain more about cookie consent in this article.
There are several more settings on this page, and for each box that you can check, there is a tooltip that explains the setting.
Some of the settings on this page are limited by license level, and these include E-Commerce, Crash analytics, Form analytics, and Media analytics.
The site search settings are useful if you want to know what the visitors are searching for on your website.
Knowing what the visitors are searching for is extra important if your search function isn’t the greatest, as the search words will tell you what to focus on for the optimization. For example, you may find that the visitors are using other search words than you were expecting, as they are using synonyms or you are using internal names for your products.
Lastly, you are also able to exclude some information, such as IP addresses.
For the IP addresses, you may want to exclude visits made by those that are working with the website, and maybe other colleagues, as they tend stay on the website a lot longer and can skew your data (affect your average visit duration, number of actions, etc.).
Again, there are tooltips to help you.
Goals
A more advanced setting is to create goals. Goals are a way of measuring what the visitors are doing on the website, and some examples of goals are: completing a purchase, contacting sales, downloading a financial report, or visiting a certain page.
Goals is not the only way to measure this, but by making them into goals you will also be able to see conversion rates, which types of visitors convert, and what marketing channels they are coming from.
By turning your objectives into goals in your analytics, you will create measurable KPIs for your website to track, analyze, and communicate with your team.
To create a goal, you go to “Data source/Analytics” and then select “Settings/Goals” in the sidebar menu.
Note that “Goals & Funnels” higher up in the menu is for viewing only, and you manage under “Settings/Goals”.
Create goals by clicking on the button “Add a new goal”.
Now it’s time for the settings.
Name and description
Start by giving the goal a name, and we recommend using names that reflect the settings. For example, instead of naming it “Goal 1”, you can name it “Looked at open jobs”. That will make it much easier for you to find the right goal later, and will also help you remember the settings for the goal.
You can also add a description if you want further explanation of the goal, which can help both you and your colleagues.
Triggers
Next, you decide how the goal is triggered. There is a manual option, but that is more complex and requires adding code to your website. We recommend the automatic triggers, but we will however go through both here.
Automatic triggers
For the automatic triggers, select “when visitors” and choose the appropriate option.
Then, define your trigger. You have a few options here too:
Contains
Contains is useful for when you want to track partial URL paths or a range of options with a similar theme.
Contains /products/ would for example match these URLs:
www.example.com/products/
www.example.com/products/couch?=black
www.example.com/products/bed
Is exactly
Is exactly is for when you want to track specific URL paths. Is exactly
www.example.com/order-confirmation
would match
www.example.com/order-confirmation
but not
www.example.com/order-confirmation?=ordernumber123
or
www.example.com/cart/order-confirmation
Matches the expression
Matches the expression uses regular expression (RegEx) to match patterns in text. It’s useful for more advanced tracking and allows you to specify any pattern you want to match.
If we wanted to match URLs containing Products OR Services, we could use:
(.*)products(.*)|(.*)services(.*)
which would match the following URLs:
www.ex.com/products/couch
www.ex.com/services/installation
Manual triggers
When you are using manual triggers, you are able to create your own trigger for the goal. It could be submitting a form, clicked on a button, or submitted a cart. Generally, it’s best to track the conversion as an event and then use automatic triggers to flag it as a goal. Events allow for a wider array of segmentation than goals.
To manually trigger a goal, you need to add a snippet of code:
extellio_actions.push(['trackGoal’, 1]);
where 1 is the goal id. You can also add a dynamic revenue to your goal like this:
extellio_actions.push(['trackGoal', 1, <?php echo $cart->getCartValue(); ?>]);
… but usually, it’s better to use to E-commerce tracking for purchases.
Case sensitivity
Decide if you want the match should be case sensitive. With case sensitivity turned off (default), /Products/ and /products/ will match.
Multiple conversions
This setting determined how you count your conversions. Should a visitor be able to convert more than once? Take subscribing to a particular newsletter - you probably want to count that once, no matter how many times the confirmation page is refreshed.
However, if the goal is sending a job application you probably want to allow the goal to be converted each time an application is sent, not just the first application the visitor sent.
Goal revenue
If you want, you can attach a monetary value to the goal conversion. Even if a conversion isn’t directly generating revenue, it’s probably still worth something.
And with that, you have created a goal. Repeat the process for any other goals you want to add.
There are many more settings for your analytics, but these are the more basic ones. In the next chapter, we’ll share some tips but also list articles we have with more settings and analytical opportunities.
