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The Trouble with the new Threshold Goals in Google Analytics (or be careful

with your interpretation of data)

This article is based on the new Google Analytics (GA) threshold goals, and some warnings on analysis problems you

are likely to encounter when analysing your web content.

These limitations are not terrible, but can cause confusion when analysing the data especially when using the new

threshold (time on site and pages / visit) goals.

How did goals used to work?

In prior releases of GA users were limited to 4 goals per profile, this meant if your website had more than 4

conversion goals (eg watch video, download brochure, comment on article, sign up for newsletter, view 'about us'

page) you were required to either create an additional profile to capture goals or to use eCommerce tracking to set

up goals as products. Some users weren't happy with this limitation.

What's changed?

Google have extended the goal functionality to enable up to 20 goals per profile now, in order to organise the goals

for reporting purposes the 20 goals are organised into what are known as "goal sets", which are essentially buckets or

folders each containing 5 goals.

What's also happened is that new types of goals have been introduced with what are now known as "threshold

goals". Threshold goals on first glance appear to be very useful - we can now track goal conversion (eg) for visitors

who spend, say, more than 3 minutes on the site or view more than 4 pages / visit. The idea behind this is that

perhaps your site is about content - like a YouTube for example - then one of your goals is to get visitors to view

more content and to spend longer on the site. Not bad, right? So, the threshold goals allow you to set conversion

thresholds - multiple times - so (eg) you can 'convert' a visitor who spends 1mins on the site, 2mins, 5mins, 10mins

etc.

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In the example above you can see how I've created two sets of goals, one for more traditional content conversion

(view form, submit form, view certain pages); the other set is based on time on site thresholds that I've set for 1, 2,

3, 5 & 10mins on site.

What's the problem?

The ability to create these threshold goals is quite nice, but can cause quite large problems with standard reporting if

you aren't careful with which metrics you are analysing. Take a look at the examples below, I'm using a secondary

dimension report (Network Location, City) to help me understand who's coming to the site:

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The problem is with the ‘conversion rate’ metric. From a logical perspective this value is correct, what GA

is going is aggregating the multiple goals together into a sum value, from an analysis perspective this can

cause problems. If you look at the first screenshot for Goal Set 1, you’ll notice (sadly) that none of the

goals have shown any conversions – yet our goal conversion rate is 59%, this is because our engagement /

threshold metrics for the 1 min on site and 2 min on site are converting very well. This isn’t necessarily

providing me with a true measure – especially when the cascading time on site values aren’t de-duplicating

as a visitor spends longer on the site. Let’s look at a very simple example:

1 Visitor comes to the site and spends 12 minutes and leaves. For this visitor we’re going to see each of

the 5 threshold goals show 100% conversion, in other words this visitor has converted at 500%. We can

argue about the inability of averages to work either, by adding another 4 visitors who see 2 pages and

leave after less than a minute: now our conversion rate is 100%. That’s another issue though!

What does this tell us? Not a great deal, however at an individual goal level this is useful data.

In summary:

Make sure you look at the metrics that GA offers very carefully so you don’t end up drawing incorrect

assumptions from your data – and if you’re using multiple threshold metrics try to avoid looking at the

‘goal conversion rate’ metric as it can be somewhat misleading, with this in mind I would recommending

using only one of each of the two kinds of threshold metrics.

In order to set your thresholds perhaps you already have

a model that tells you x mins on site or y pages / visit is

profitable – in which case use your KPI’s, otherwise take

a look at your averages for these metrics and add (eg) 1

standard deviation above the average to help you

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identify the top ~15% of visitors. Through application of the central limit theorum you can adjust your

threshold metrics to select different populations.

Now, wouldn’t it be nice if GA intelligence helped you out with these calculations!

It’s worth remembering that you can apply these same threshold metrics in advanced segments as an

alternative way of determining your threshold limits.

Something also worth considering at the moment, is that

the 20 goals are not currently available in custom

reporting, this is likely to be a release for future – but the

new goals as implemented won’t be available for (eg)

creating revised traffic source reports with custom

threshold goals (excluding the overall goal conversion

rate).

The new goals also aren’t available yet in advanced

segments which is also worth considering for future

analyses.

What should Google do?

I would recommend two courses of action:

1. Remove the overall goal conversion rate metric, or

2. Replace the overall goal conversion rate metric with a new ‘goal set conversion rate’ to make the

metric column appropriate to the tab of the report.

Enjoy making use of these new features, but please be careful with your analysis!