How do I set up goals in analytics to track the sales funnel when several pages of the steps required to checkout have the same url?

[pookiepro]

I have found this in Google Analytic but it makes no sense to me - is there are better resource which explains how you do this step by step ( or a good video perhaps?)

Identical URLs Across Multiple Steps

In some situations, the URL does not change across a sequence of activity. For example, a sign-up process might have the following URL path:

• Step 1 (Sign Up): www.example.com/sign_up.cgi
• Step 2 (Accept Agreement): www.example.com/sign_up.cgi
• Step 3 (Finish): www.example.com/sign_up.cgi

To track visitors' progress through a funnel with the same URL for each step, modify the tracking code to create a virtual URL for each step in the sequence that you want to track. For details on how to use this in your tracking code, see Virtual Pageviews in the _Asynchronous Migration Examples_guide, which shows how to do this in all versions of the tracking code. The following example shows how you might fabricate 3 URLs using the asynchronous tracking code:

_gaq.push(['_trackPageview', '/funnel_G1/step1.html']);
_gaq.push(['_trackPageview', '/funnel_G1/step2.html']);
_gaq.push(['_trackPageview', '/funnel_G1/step3.html']);

You would then define your funnel and goal URLs using the ones you created in the tracking code modifications.

[pookiepro]

Thanks Paul I will give it go..much obliged.

[ThompsonPaul]

In order to track those steps even though the URL doesn't change after each step, you have to create what is essentially an extra "fake" page view to be fed into Analytics each time a visitor takes an action towards the goal on that one page.

So you will add a bit of event tracking script to each action the visitor takes. The result will be that each time a visitor triggers an event (clicking Add to Cart, clicking Proceed to Checkout etc.), it will be seen by Analytics as a new page view. You can then include these new pages as the steps in your goal tracking. (You'll create the names of these pages in the event-tracking code you insert)

Dos that help it make sense?

Paul

P.S. The one caveat to all this - each of the new events will be tracked as pageviews in Analytics, artificially inflating your overall pageview metrics. You'll need to filter them out (using custom reports or a separate profile) in order to keep them from distorting the real pageviews and creating misleading data for the other analyses you might be doing.

[pookiepro]

Yes.  Its like this...

add to cart = /cart.php

Proceed to Checkout = /cart.php

Submit Customer Details = /cart.php

Submit to Payment/Order  Page = /cart.php

Order Confirmation = /success.php?oid=

[jws8118]

If the URL's are all the same are there different actions that the user is taking on the page?