If you’ve read some of our earlier blogs on Google Analytics, you’ll know that this free tool is critical to monitoring your firm’s success online. From bounce rates to referral traffic, Google Analytics allows your firm to better understand your audience and what types of pages inspire potential claimants to contact your firm. One critical component of using Google Analytics effectively is by setting goals.
What is a “Goal?”
A goal is a desirable action performed by a user on your website. Goals are used to see how successful or profitable individual pages are on a website. There are many types of goals your firm could set. Here are just a few examples:
- Sign-Up/Form Completion
- Subscribe
- Download
- Visit Specific Page
Sign ups: A sign-up is pretty self-explanatory. This is when a user submits his or her contact information for further use—Usually for a consultation by your firm.
Subscribe: Users can subscribe to newsletters or other firm updates.
Download: Downloads are likely not common goals for law firms, but you could host white papers or other beneficial information online and have potential claimants download them for further use.
Page visit: As for specific pages, you can track how often someone navigates to a page that’s desirable for your firm, such as a contact us page. This can be a useful goal because it’ll allow you to see if claimants are able to navigate your site easily.
Event tracking: This may be the most important goal for attorneys. In Google Analytics, you can record a completed goal when someone calls your firm after finding the number on your website. You can also segment your received phone calls by source (organic traffic, paid ads, social media, etc.) to see where most of your calls come from.
Do You Need Goals?
To put it simply, yes. Any firm investing time in updating and maintaining a website needs to set Goals in Google Analytics. Without goals it’ll be impossible to know which pages on your site yield the most conversions. Once you can determine where most of your online contacts come from, you can optimize those pages, or add content that’s similar to the pages that perform well.
Google has a few tutorials on how to set goals. If you have a web developer in house, he or she should be able to implement them easily. Overall, it’s worth the minimal effort if you’re dedicating any time to your firm’s website.
Other Considerations
Goals and Google Analytics in general is easy to set up. The software gives your firm instant access to valuable information regarding how potential claimants interact with your website.
Unfortunately, Google Analytics is only the tip of the digital marketing iceberg. Even with data on which pages convert best for your site, it’ll be hard to implement any valuable changes without a dedicated content marketer or SEM. If you choose to slowly build up your firm’s website over time, you’ll likely find that growth takes six months or more. Some areas of law (personal injury in particular) are highly saturated, meaning you may never rank at the top of Google.
Lead generation is a cost-effective way to supplement your current marketing endeavors. eGen has been a leader in the legal lead space since 2009. To discuss our pricing and product availability, give us a call today at 617.000.0089.