A goal is a term in digital analytics that stands for something to be achieved. Some of the most popular goals for e-commerce websites include a purchase, newsletter subscription, and new user sign-up.
In most cases, a goal stands for something that is good for the business but doesn’t necessarily have to be so. For example, you might track refunds as goals, too.
A successful completion of a goal is generally referred to as a conversion. Therefore, conversion rate (of the major goal) is one of the most important metrics for a website.
Depending on a platform you are using, a goal can have multiple possible definitions or criteriums, most common one being visiting a specific page (i.e. thank you page), followed by custom events and duration (i.e. users who spent more than 10 minutes on your site).
Here’s an example of a goal set up in Google Analytics.
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Last modified: December 11, 2017
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