Google analytics ignoring "required step" in goals
- by Matt Huggins
I am A/B testing a landing page to see which converts better. The funnels are set up exactly the same in terms of the goal completion URL and funnel steps, with one exception: the first step (which is a required step) has a different URL to represent each of the two landing pages.
Unfortunately, Google is tracking a conversion for both of these goals regardless of which landing page a user is reaching! It looks like the "required step" is broken...perhaps it is a deeper issue if others haven't noticed it, such as it only not working when the goal URL is the same between multiple goals.
Here is an example of what I mean.
Goal 1:
Goal URL:
/users/dashboard (head match)
Funnel:
1. /homepages/index1 (required step)
2. /users/register
3. /users/edit
Goal 2:
Goal URL:
/users/dashboard (head match)
Funnel:
1. /homepages/index2 (required step)
2. /users/register
3. /users/edit
As you can see, the only difference is step #1 of the funnel. Since I am A/B testing the landing page of the site, this should be the only difference. However, when I look at the goal page of Google Analytics, I see that the goal is being recorded for both of these regardless of the landing page being reached.
The only tinkering I've done is attempting to wrap each funnel step's goal in ^ and $ characters for an exact regular expression match, but this didn't make a difference. Thoughts?
