How to Create Goals in Google Analytics

Setting up goals in Google Analytics is the first step toward understanding if your website is actually working. Without them, you’re just tracking clicks and visits - metrics that don’t tell you if you're generating leads, making sales, or attracting subscribers. This guide will walk you through exactly how to set up meaningful goals in Google Analytics 4 so you can start measuring what matters.

What Are Goals in Google Analytics (And Why Do They Matter)?

In the digital marketing world, simply having a website isn't enough. You need to know if it's accomplishing its purpose. That's where goals come in. A "goal" tracks a specific interaction or conversion you want users to complete on your site.

Think of it this way: website traffic tells you how many people are showing up to the party. Goals tell you how many people are actually dancing, talking to other guests, or trying the guacamole - the actions that signify they're having a good time and are likely to come back.

Tracking goals is essential because it allows you to:

• Measure ROI: Connect your marketing efforts (like ad campaigns or social media posts) directly to valuable outcomes, like sales or leads.
• Understand User Behavior: See which pages, content, or traffic sources lead to the most conversions, helping you understand the customer journey.
• Optimize Your Website: Identify friction points where users are dropping off before completing a goal, giving you clear opportunities for improvement.

Simply put, goals transform raw data into business intelligence, helping you move from guessing to making data-driven decisions.

The Old vs. The New: Universal Analytics Goals vs. GA4 Conversions

If you've used Google Analytics before, you might be familiar with the "Goals" section in Universal Analytics (UA). In UA, you had four specific goal types you could configure.

The Four Classic Goal Types (in Universal Analytics)

UA’s goal setup was structured and a bit rigid. The four types were:

1. Destination: Fired when a user lands on a specific page, like a “/thank-you” or “/order-confirmation” page. This was the most common and reliable type of goal.
2. Duration: Triggered when a user stays on your site for a specific amount of time, for example, five minutes or longer. Useful for measuring engagement on content-heavy sites.
3. Pages/Screens per session: Completed when a user views a certain number of pages during a single visit. Another useful metric for gauging user engagement.
4. Event: Based on a user interaction you've tagged as an "event," such as clicking a button, playing a video, or downloading a PDF. This was the most flexible type and offered a preview of GA4’s approach.

While this structure worked, it could be limiting. Google Analytics 4 changes the game completely by making the process much more flexible and powerful.

The GA4 Approach: Everything is an Event

In Google Analytics 4, the concept of goals has been renamed to Conversions. More importantly, every goal is now based on an event. There are no more destination, duration, or pages-per-session goal types.

This event-based model is a huge advantage. It means you can turn any user interaction - from a page view to a button click to a newsletter sign-up - into a conversion you track. If you can measure it as an event, you can count it as a goal. All you have to do is tell GA4 which events you care about most by marking them as conversions.

Before You Start: Planning Your Website Goals

Jumping straight into GA4 to set up goals without a plan is a common mistake. Before you click a single button, take five minutes to map out what you actually need to track. A well-planned set of goals will give you a clean, actionable report, while poorly planned goals create a noisy, confusing mess.

Follow these quick steps:

1. Define Your Business Objectives: What is the main purpose of your website? To generate revenue? To capture leads? To build an audience? Start high-level.
2. Identify Key Website Actions: Based on your objectives, what are the most critical actions a user can take? These are your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). For example:
3. Map Actions to GA4 Events: Now, think about how each key action translates into a recordable event in Google Analytics.

Completing this simple exercise will give you a clear roadmap for what to create inside GA4.

Step-by-Step Guide: How to Create Your Goals (Conversions) in GA4

There are two primary ways to set up conversions in GA4: using an event that already exists or creating a brand new custom event from scratch. Let’s walk through both.

Method 1: Marking an Existing Event as a Conversion (The Easy Way)

GA4 automatically tracks many common events, like page_view, session_start, and scroll. If the action you want to track is already captured by an existing event, all you need to do is flip a switch.

This is perfect for conversions like purchases, pre-built form events, or sign-ups that GA4 might already be tracking. Let's imagine you want to track sign_up as a goal.

1. Navigate to your GA4 property and click on Admin in the bottom-left corner (the gear icon).
2. In the Property column, look for the Events section and click on Events.
3. You'll see a list of all event names your site has sent to Google Analytics. Find the event you want to turn into a goal (e.g., sign_up or purchase).
4. On the far right of that row, you'll see a toggle switch under the Mark as conversion column. Simply click that toggle to turn it on.

That's it! From now on, whenever GA4 records that sign_up event, it will also count it as a conversion.

Method 2: Creating a New Custom Event for Your Conversion

What if the user action you want to track doesn't have a pre-existing event? The most common example is a contact form submission that leads to a "thank you" page. GA4 logs this as a generic page_view, but you want a specific event just for that page.

In this case, you can create a custom event based on the parameters of an existing event - like the URL of the thank you page.

Here’s how to set it up:

1. Again, navigate to Admin → Events.
2. At the top of the event list, click the Create event button.
3. In the custom events panel, click Create.
4. Now, you'll configure your new event:
5. Click Create in the top-right corner.

Now, anytime someone views a page with a URL containing /contact-us/thank-you, Google Analytics will not only log a page_view event but will also log your new generate_lead event.

Very Important Final Step: You still need to mark this new custom event as a conversion! It can take between a few hours and a full day for your new event to start collecting data and appear in your Admin → Events list. Once it shows up, follow the steps in Method 1 to toggle it on as a conversion.

Where to Find Your Goal and Conversion Data

Once your goals are set up and collecting data, you'll want to see how they're performing. Here are the key places to check:

1. The Conversions Report

The primary report for viewing goal performance is straightforward:

• In the left-hand navigation, go to Reports → Engagement → Conversions.

This report shows you a simple list of all of your conversions and the total number of times each has been completed. It's a great high-level overview.

2. The Traffic Acquisition Report

This is where your conversion data becomes truly powerful. This report shows you which marketing channels are driving the valuable actions on your site.

• Go to Reports → Acquisition → Traffic Acquisition.

By default, this report shows metrics like Users, Sessions, and Engaged sessions for each traffic channel (e.g., Organic Search, Direct, Paid Search). The Conversions column is usually visible on the far right. Now you can easily see, for example, that your Google Ads campaigns drove 50 generate_lead conversions while your organic search traffic drove 120.

Final Thoughts

Setting up conversions in GA4 is the most effective way to measure what truly matters on your website. By moving from legacy goal types to a flexible, event-based model, you get a much more accurate and detailed view of user behavior and business performance. This ultimately empowers you to make smarter decisions and grow your business.

Of course, tracking conversions in Google Analytics is just the beginning. The real challenge comes when you need to combine that conversion data with insights from other platforms like Shopify, Salesforce, or your ad accounts. Instead of spending hours pulling reports and wrangling spreadsheets, we've made that process as simple as asking a question. With Graphed, we help you connect all your data sources and use natural language to ask for exactly what you need, like, "Show me a dashboard comparing Facebook Ads spend with GA4 generate_lead conversions by campaign." Our AI analyst builds the report in seconds, so you can stop collecting data and start using it.