How to Set Goal Value in Google Analytics

Assigning a monetary value to your website goals in Google Analytics turns fuzzy metrics like "form submissions" into concrete business insights. This simple step helps you understand which marketing channels and site pages are actually making you money. We’ll walk through how to calculate a realistic value for your conversions and then how to set it up in both Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 4.

What Exactly is a Goal Value in Google Analytics?

A Goal Value is a specific monetary amount you assign to a completed goal (or "conversion" in GA4) on your website. Think of it as putting a price tag on a valuable user action that isn't a direct purchase. While e-commerce tracking automatically captures the revenue from transactions, goal values are for everything else.

Why do this? Not all conversions are created equal. A "Contact Us" form submission from a potential high-value client is far more valuable than a newsletter signup. Without assigning values, Google Analytics just reports the total number of completions, treating them all the same. Once you add values, you can start measuring the real impact of your non-e-commerce conversions.

Examples of Conversions with Goal Values

• Lead Generation Forms: "Request a Quote," "Book a Demo," "Contact Sales."
• Content Engagement: "PDF Download," "Webinar Registration," "Case Study View."
• Email Signups: "Subscribe to Newsletter," "Join the Waitlist."
• Pre-purchase Actions: "Create an Account," "Add to Wishlist."

A crucial point: if you already have e-commerce tracking enabled, you should not assign a goal value to your final "purchase confirmation" page. Doing so would lead to double-counting your revenue in reports, which would make your data inaccurate.

Why Bother Assigning a Value to Your Goals?

Skipping this step is like ignoring a huge chunk of your performance story. Setting goal values unlocks several powerful reporting features and helps you make smarter decisions. Here's why it's worth the small upfront effort.

1. Pinpoint Your Most Valuable Marketing Channels

It's easy to see which channel drives the most traffic (e.g., Organic Search) or even the most goal completions. But which one drives the most value? Maybe your organic traffic drives hundreds of low-value newsletter signups, while a niche PPC campaign drives just a few, but highly valuable, "Request a Demo" submissions. Goal values let you answer questions like:

• What is the ROI of my investment in SEO vs. Facebook Ads?
• Which email campaign generated the highest value leads this month?
• How much is a visitor from LinkedIn worth compared to a visitor from Google?

2. Discover Your Most Impactful Pages with Page Value

Once you set goal values, Google Analytics automatically calculates a metric called "Page Value." This metric tells you the average value of a page that a user visited before landing on a goal completion page. It essentially distributes the value of a completed goal across all the pages that contributed to that conversion path.

This is incredibly insightful. You might find that your blog posts, while not directly converting users, have a high Page Value because they are a crucial first step for people who eventually contact your sales team. This data helps you justify content marketing efforts and identify which content to create more of.

3. Optimize Bidding in Google Ads

If you've connected your Google Analytics and Google Ads accounts, you can import your conversions to be used for ad campaign optimization. When these conversions have a monetary value attached, you can leverage advanced bidding strategies like Target ROAS (Return On Ad Spend). This tells Google Ads to optimize your bids to achieve a specific return for every dollar spent, a far more powerful strategy than simply aiming for a low Cost Per Acquisition (CPA).

How to Calculate a Realistic Goal Value

The biggest hurdle for most people is figuring out what number to put in the box. Don't let perfection be the enemy of progress. An estimated value is infinitely better than no value at all. Here’s a pragmatic approach for different types of businesses.

For Lead Generation (B2B & Service Businesses)

If your website's main purpose is to generate sales leads, the calculation is fairly straightforward. You just need two numbers: your Average Customer Value (or average deal size) and your Lead-to-Customer conversion rate.

The formula is:

Goal Value = Average Customer Value x Lead-to-Close Rate (%)

Example:

Let's say you're a marketing agency.

• Your average client contract is worth $2,000.
• Your sales team closes 1 out of every 10 qualified leads that come from your website's contact form. That's a 10% (or 0.10) lead-to-close rate.

Your calculation would be:

Goal Value = $2,000 * 0.10 = $200

In this case, you would set the Goal Value for your "Contact Form Submitted" goal to $200.

For E-commerce (non-purchase conversions)

For an e-commerce site, you're tracking direct revenue already. But other actions have value too, like getting a customer to sign up for your mailing list.

The formula for a newsletter signup could be:

Goal Value = (Total Monthly Revenue From Email) / (Number of New Subscribers per Month)

Example:

Let's say you run an online store for artisanal coffee.

• You can attribute $1,500 in sales to your email marketing campaigns last month.
• During that same month, your newsletter signup form generated 300 new subscribers.

Your calculation would be:

Goal Value = $1,500 / 300 = $5

Now you can set your "Newsletter Subscription" Goal Value to $5.

Step-by-Step Guide to Setting Goal Values in Google Analytics

The process is different depending on whether you're using the older Universal Analytics (UA) or the new Google Analytics 4.

For Universal Analytics (UA)

Although UA has stopped processing new data, you may still want to check or update an old setup.

1. Navigate to the Admin section by clicking the gear icon in the bottom left.
2. In the View column on the right, click on Goals.
3. Either click + NEW GOAL to create a new one or click on an existing goal to edit its settings.
4. Proceed through the setup screens until you reach the Goal Details section.
5. You will see a slider for Value. Toggle it to ON.
6. An input box will appear. Enter the monetary value you calculated (e.g., 200).
7. Click Save.

Important Note: Any changes to goal values in UA are not retroactive. The new value will only be applied to conversions that happen after you save the change.

For Google Analytics 4

GA4 handles this process differently. "Goals" are now called "Conversions," and you don't assign a value to the conversion itself. Instead, you assign a value to the underlying event that you mark as a conversion. The value is passed as an event parameter called value.

1. Decide How You'll Send the Value

You have two main options:

• For dynamic values (Recommended): Send the value parameter directly from your website's code or, more commonly, via Google Tag Manager (GTM). This is best practice as it's the most flexible.
• For static values (Easy method): If you have a simple, unchanging value and aren't comfortable with GTM, you can use the Modify event feature within the GA4 interface to add the value.

2. How to Add a Static Value in the GA4 Interface

This is the simplest way. Let's say you have an event called generate_lead firing when someone completes your contact form, and you want to assign it a value of $200.

1. Click the Admin gear icon in the bottom left.
2. Under the Property column, go to Data streams > Events page.
3. Click the Modify event button in the top right, then click Create.
4. Give your new Modified Event a name. A good practice is to add _with_value to the original event name. For example: generate_lead_with_value.
5. Under Matching Conditions, set the condition to be: event_name equals generate_lead. This tells GA4 which incoming event you want to modify.
6. Under Parameter configuration, click Add modification.
7. Set the fields as follows:
8. Click Add modification again to add the currency.

• Set the fields as follows:

1. Click Create in the top right.

3. Mark Your New Event as a Conversion

Wait a few hours (or until you trigger the original event again on your site) for your newly created event (generate_lead_with_value) to show up in the main Events table. Once it's there:

1. Find the new event in the list.
2. Toggle the switch in the "Mark as conversion" column to ON.

Where to See Your Goal Value Data

You’ve done the setup, now where do you find the payoff?

In Universal Analytics:

• Conversions > Goals > Overview: You can see the "Total Goal Value" here.
• Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels: This is a powerful report where you can compare the "Goal Completion" count vs. the "Goal Value" for each traffic source.
• Behavior > Site Content > All Pages: Look for the "Page Value" column to spot your most valuable content.

In Google Analytics 4:

• Reports > Engagement > Conversions: When you open the details for a specific conversion event, you will see "Event value" as a key metric.
• Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition: This report shows you revenue by channel, which now includes both e-commerce purchases AND your new conversion values, all under "Total revenue."
• Explore: This is where you can truly leverage the data. Create a "Free-form Exploration" and add Event value as a metric. You can then slice and dice it by any dimension you need - such as session source/medium, landing page, device category, or country - to get deep insights into what’s driving value for your business.

Final Thoughts

Setting up goal values in Google Analytics is one of the highest-impact configurations you can make. It elevates your reporting from simple counting exercises to genuine business analysis, allowing you to correctly measure ROI and confidently decide where to invest your time and budget for maximum effect.

While setting this up is a great first step, making sense of all your marketing and sales data across different platforms can still feel overwhelming. We built Graphed to bridge that gap by letting you connect sources like Google Analytics, your CRM, and your ad platforms in one place. You can build dashboards instantly in plain English, allowing you to ask, "which campaigns have the best conversion value this quarter?" and get an immediate answer without digging through menus and reports.