Your site might not have any clear, well-defined conversion goals to glean web marketing data from if it doesn’t have e-commerce, lacks an e-mail newsletter (shame on you!) or doesn’t collect leads. Regardless, all sorts of measurable goals reside on your site. They might be hiding, but they’re there. You just have to coax them out.
Hidden goals might include:
A download: If you have a white paper, brochure, or other information on your site in PDF format, folks might download it. If they download it, chances are they’re more interested than the average passersby. With a little work, you can track those downloads as a goal.
A page view: If folks view one particular page on your site, does that tell you they’re going to call? Think about those folks who view the Contact us page. You can easily track that as a goal.
A video: If a visitor watches your entire video about your corporate philosophy, that’s definitely a win. Someone with a bit of technical expertise can help you track completed views as goals, too.
A Forward to a Friend link: Does your site have a Forward This Page to a Friend tool? That’s definitely a goal. Track how many folks forward pages to friends; those people are interested enough to recommend you.
A ZIP code search: If you have lots of stores and a visitor tries to find one, that’s a conversion.
You can have even fancier hidden goals: You can track all visitors who look at more than seven pages on your site as a conversion, for example. Tracking these types of goals generally requires a fair amount of expertise.
Hidden goals are rarely worth as much as a sale, but they’re still conversions because visitors who complete them have taken a step toward working with you. Track those visitors, and you get a peek at how your site is performing in terms of your business.