Understand goal reports

Where to find the Goal reports

In the side menu, click "Goals".

A submenu opens. Choose "Goal reports" there.

The Goal reports page opens.

The period being analyzed always follows the date selection at the top. Set a different period there and the entire report adjusts immediately.

The goal selector

A dropdown sits at the very top. With it you decide which of your goals the report is currently showing. Pick a goal and the whole page below it, so the metrics, the charts, and the table, recalculates for that one goal right away.

That is the core of this page: you only ever look at one goal, but you look at it properly.

The metrics

Four metrics sit side by side at the top for the goal you selected:

Always read conversions and conversion rate together. A high number with a low rate means you have plenty of visitors, but only a small share does what you were hoping for. A small number with a high rate means the opposite: the right people are coming, there are just too few of them. In the first case, you work on your page, in the second, on your reach.

The trend

A line chart showing for each day how this goal developed. Hover over the line with your mouse, and you see the exact date and value for each day.

Two lines that you control yourself. Above the chart sit the labels Conversions and, if a revenue value is stored with this goal, Revenue. Both are active at the start. Click a label, and the matching line disappears. A second click brings it back.

This is where you spot the pattern behind the big number. Do the conversions come in evenly, or are there individual spikes, always right after a send, for example? Those spikes are exactly what tells you what worked.

And what is the point of showing and hiding? When both lines run at the same time, they easily cover each other, because conversions come in single digits and revenue in the hundreds. Hide one and you see the other cleanly and without distraction. For the question "how many?" leave only Conversions on, for "how much?" only Revenue.

With a fixed revenue value, the revenue line looks exactly like the conversions line, just with different numbers. That makes sense: if every order is counted at USD 49, the revenue is simply the count times 49. The second line only gets genuinely revealing with real amounts, so when you take the value from the address or from the event.

Patience when judging it: individual days swing a lot, especially on smaller websites. A day with few visits easily yanks the curve up or down without anything having changed. Judge a change after a few days at the earliest, or better after two weeks.

The heatmap

A heatmap is a table made up of many small colored squares. Sounds technical, but it is quickly explained:

• From bottom to top: the seven days of the week, Sunday through Saturday.
• From left to right: the 24 hours of a day, from 12 AM to 11 PM.
• The color: the darker a square, the more conversions there were on that weekday at that hour. Light squares mean few or none.

Hover over a square with your mouse, and an info window tells you exactly what it is about: which weekday, which hour, and how many conversions. Something like "Tue at 3 AM, 2 conversion".

The practical benefit: you see when targeted campaigns pay off most for this specific goal. If the dark squares cluster on Tuesday around midday, then that is when you send your newsletter, not on Friday evening when nobody is looking anymore.

The difference from the heatmap in the overview: there you see all goals added together. Here only this one. And that can produce a completely different picture. Newsletter sign-ups often happen in the evening on the couch, orders on the other hand, on weekdays at the office. In the combined view that blurs into an average that fits neither of the two goals.

A note on the times: the hours follow your own time zone, not the visitor's.

The table

At the very bottom you see a list of the most recent conversions, up to 25 of them, the newest at the top. Four columns:

The "Page" column gets skimmed over a lot, but it says plenty. If your newsletter goal suddenly shows conversions on a page you never expected, there is a sign-up form there that works well. It might be worth building that into other places too.

What you can click in the table

Click the visitor code in the "Visitor" column. The visitor profile opens in a window. There you follow this visitor's complete path: which pages they visited, where they came from, and when. That way you look at the whole route from the first visit to the conversion, step by step.

And this is exactly where the value of this table sits. Open five profiles in a row and you spot patterns no statistic shows. Do people reach the goal on their first visit, or do they look around three times first? Do they always land on the same page first? And through which channel? Five individual routes tell you more than a percentage across a thousand visits.

What does "All goals" mean?

Sometimes the top of the page says "All goals" instead of a single goal. That happens when a previously selected goal was deleted, for example, so none is selected anymore. In that case Trustlytics hides the detail analyses, meaning the metrics, the trend, the heatmap, and the table.

No reason to worry. Just pick a specific goal again in the dropdown at the top, and all the analyses come back.

When there are no conversions

If there were no conversions for this goal in the selected period, the charts show the note "No conversions in the selected period." instead of a diagram, and the table reports "There were no conversions in the selected period yet."

That is not an error either. Usually one of three harmless causes is behind it:

• The period at the top is set too tight. Set it larger, to the last month, for example.
• The goal was created only recently. Then there simply has not been any data yet.
• The goal is not set up cleanly and therefore does not trigger. A look at the setup is worth it, see the last section.

Overview or reports, what is the difference?

Under Goals in the menu you find two pages, and they are easy to mix up at first:

The overview shows all goals side by side. Totals, a comparison bar, which goal is doing best, and a list of every goal. The quick look around.

The reports on this page show a single goal in detail. Trend, its own heatmap, and the most recent conversions along with the visitor profile. The place to look right into one goal.

In short: overview to compare, reports to dig in.

Aha moments you will recognize

The goal report is the page where a bare number suddenly turns into a story. This is what jumps out first when you look through it:

• The conversions all come in at the same time. The heatmap shows a dark patch on Tuesday morning and hardly anything else. From now on, you time your campaigns right there instead of guessing.
• A spike in the trend that you can explain. The day after the newsletter, the line picks up. Proof that it worked, right there in the chart.
• Revenue rises even though the conversions stay flat. You show one line and then the other in the trend and see it: the same people are ordering, just bigger than before. An observation that never shows up in a total.
• One look at a visitor profile and the penny drops. You click a code and see it: the visitor had already been there three times before deciding. Routes like that show you that a conversion rarely happens on the first visit.
• Two goals, two completely different heatmaps. You switch goals in the dropdown and see an entirely different picture. Newsletter sign-ups in the evening, orders at midday. What looked like one average in the overview is really two separate rhythms.
• The conversion count sits at zero even though sign-ups are obviously coming in. Almost always the goal misses the action because it is set up wrong. Annoying, but fixed in five minutes.

What is in it for me?

The overview shows you the "what". The goal report delivers the "how" and "when":

• How is my goal developing? The trend shows whether it runs evenly or lives off individual campaigns.
• Did my change work? The trend shows it a few days later, more honestly than any gut feeling.
• When is my audience ready? The heatmap reveals the best moment for your next campaign, for this goal and not for the average of all of them.
• Who converted most recently, and by which route? The table and the visitor profile show the whole path up to the conversion.

The real value is that you stop seeing a single goal as just a number and start understanding what is behind it. The overview says "running". The report says "running, because the newsletter lands on Tuesday mornings, and people mostly come back on their second visit". That knowledge is what turns a lucky hit into a method you can repeat.

Common questions

What is the difference between the overview and the reports?
The overview shows all goals at a glance, good for a quick comparison. The report shows a single goal in detail, with trend, heatmap and the most recent conversions. If you want to compare, take the overview. If you want to really understand a goal, you are in the right place here.

It says "All goals" for me, and the analyses are missing. What is going on?
Then no single goal is selected right now, often after deleting a goal. Pick a specific goal in the dropdown at the top, and the metrics, the charts, and the table come back.

What is behind the visitor code? Can I see who the person is?
No, and that is on purpose. The code is anonymous. It contains no name, no email, and no real IP address. You see the visitor's route through your site, but never who they actually are.

The table already shows conversions, but the charts are empty. Why?
Because the table shows the current day live, while the charts are processed overnight. With a new goal, the full trends and the heatmap, therefore, usually appear the next morning.

I see sign-ups on my site, but the report shows zero. What is going on?
Almost always the goal is not set up cleanly and therefore misses the action. Check under "Settings → Conversion goals" whether the stored condition really matches the page or the event. A small typo in the condition is enough for nothing to be counted.

Why is there a dash in "Revenue"?
Because no revenue value is stored with that goal. Revenue only appears if you deliberately assigned a value to a goal, per order for example. Without a value, Trustlytics cannot calculate revenue and therefore shows "—".

Which time zone does the heatmap use?
Your own, not the visitor's. When it says "2 PM" there, your local time is meant.

Why do I only see 25 entries in the table?
Because the table is meant as a sample, not as a full log. For a pattern, 25 routes are plenty. If you want to go through every visit in a period, use the visitor log.

Can I compare two goals directly side by side?
Not on one screen. Switch back and forth between the two in the dropdown, and you will still spot the differences well. For comparing several goals directly, the goals overview is the place.

How often should I look at the goal report?
For day to day work, the overview once a week is enough. You open the detail report deliberately when you want to understand a goal more closely, after a change to your site or after a bigger campaign, for example. Then the trend and the heatmap show you whether and when it worked.

Where do I create or change goals?

This page only shows the results. You create, edit, or delete goals somewhere else: Settings → Conversion goals. The detailed instructions are in the article Set up goals