Tracking customer reviews and testimonials submissions is essential for understanding user engagement and improving your strategies. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to set up and track these goals in Google Analytics:

1. Define Your Goals

Before setting up goals in Google Analytics, you need to clearly define what constitutes a goal. For customer reviews and testimonials, typical goals might include:

• A thank you page visit after a review submission.
• An event triggered when the review submission form is successfully submitted.

2. Set Up Goals in Google Analytics

Step 1: Log in to Google Analytics

• Go to Google Analytics and log in to your account.

Step 2: Navigate to Admin

• In the bottom-left corner, click on the Admin gear icon.

Step 3: Select the Account and Property

• Choose the account and property where you want to set up the goal.

Step 4: Set Up a New Goal

• Under the “View” column, click on “Goals.”
• Click the “New Goal” button.

Step 5: Choose a Goal Setup

• Select a goal setup. You can use a custom setup for more flexibility.
• Click “Continue.”

Step 6: Describe Your Goal

• Name your goal (e.g., “Review Submission”).
• Select a goal type. For tracking reviews, you can choose between “Destination” or “Event.”
  • Destination: Tracks when users land on a specific page (e.g., a thank you page).
  • Event: Tracks specific interactions (e.g., form submissions).

Step 7: Configure Your Goal Details

For a Destination Goal:

• Select “Destination” and click “Continue.”
• In the “Destination” field, enter the URL of the thank you page that appears after a review is submitted (e.g., /thank-you).

For an Event Goal:

• Select “Event” and click “Continue.”
• Configure the event details:
  • Category: e.g., “Review”
  • Action: e.g., “Submit”
  • Label: e.g., “Customer Review Form”
  • You can leave the “Value” field blank unless you want to assign a specific value to each review submission.

Step 8: Verify Your Goal

• Click “Verify this Goal” to check if the goal setup is correct and to see a preview of how it might perform based on past data.

Step 9: Save Your Goal

• Click “Save” to finish setting up your goal.

3. Set Up Event Tracking for Form Submissions

If you choose an Event goal, you need to ensure event tracking is correctly set up on your website. Here’s how to do it:

Step 1: Add Event Tracking Code

• Use Google Tag Manager (GTM) to set up event tracking without modifying the website code directly.

Step 2: Create a New Tag in GTM

• Log in to Google Tag Manager.
• Create a new tag and configure it:
  • Choose “Tag Configuration” and select “Google Analytics: Universal Analytics.”
  • Choose “Event” as the Track Type.
  • Fill in the Event Tracking Parameters:
    • Category: “Review”
    • Action: “Submit”
    • Label: “Customer Review Form”

Step 3: Set Up a Trigger

• Set up a trigger to fire the tag when the review submission form is submitted.
• Click on “Triggering” and choose “New.”
• Select “Form Submission” or configure a custom trigger based on your form’s specific attributes (e.g., CSS selectors).

Step 4: Publish Your Changes

• After configuring the tag and trigger, publish your changes in GTM.

4. Monitor and Analyze Your Goals in Google Analytics

Step 1: Access Goal Reports

• In Google Analytics, go to the “Conversions” section and click on “Goals” to see an overview of your goals’ performance.

Step 2: Review Goal Completions

• Check the “Goal Completions” and “Goal Conversion Rate” metrics to understand how many users are submitting reviews.

Step 3: Analyze Goal Flow

• Use the “Goal Flow” report to visualize the path users take to complete the goal. This can help identify potential drop-off points or areas for improvement.

Step 4: Segment Your Data

• Create custom segments to analyze the behavior of users who submit reviews compared to those who don’t. This can provide insights into what drives review submissions.

Conclusion

Setting up and tracking goals for customer reviews and testimonials submissions in Google Analytics involves defining clear goals, configuring destination or event-based tracking, and using Google Tag Manager for accurate event tracking. Regularly monitoring and analyzing these goals will help you understand user behavior, measure engagement, and optimize your strategies to increase review submissions.