There are four main goals that you can set up in google analytics. The four goals are URLs, duration for tracking how long a user was on a page, page/visits, and event goals. All of these goals have thier own strengths for tacking important information. This information can be used to get more insights for how to improve you website. When it comes down to getting the most important insights into parts of your site, event tracking is the goal type you should be thinking about.
Event goal types are the most critical goals for tracking important metrics on your site. For tacking downloads, social media buttons, or widget usage you need to set up an event goal type. They are the hardest and take the most time to set up, but once they are set up, you can track the most important information for the successful of your business. Event Goals allow you to get information on categories, actions, labels, and views. If you want, you can even set up an event goal to focus on just one of these four conditions. For example, if you only want the event to track actions, then you just select the actions condition when creating the goal.