Basic Conversion Tracking for Your Business

by Emily Woodman, Guest Contributor

Tracking your conversions is one of the  most successful strategies to long-term success. Theoretically, everyone knows that. However, when it comes to the actual performance, many would appreciate some guidelines.

Let’s start with explaining what conversion tracking actually is. Generally speaking, it allows you to see how website visitors interact with your ads. Will they download your app? Are they buying the product?

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Will they sign up to receive newsletters? Depending on the scope of the business, there may be additional actions to track.

Conversion Tracking in a Nutshell
Conversion tracking will provide you with numerous insights that will help you come up with a more targeted strategy in the future. It will allow you to learn which keywords, campaigns and ads drive value and how many visitors interact with the ads.

Conversion Tracking
Let’s see how you can set up a couple of web analytics for your website, step-by-step.

Setting up Heatmaps
Sign up for a free Hotjar account. The tool offers session recordings and heatmaps (see a detailed description below). Install Hotjar on your website by logging in to your Google Tag Manager, choosing your container and clicking on tags. Choose “Hotjar” and enter the ID you got from the service. Publish the container and verify the tracking code in Hotjar.

A free Hotjar account will allow you to install three heat maps with up to 1,000 visitors per map. To get the finest of insights, record the following:

• Most popular pages (Google Analytics > behavior > overview)
• Sales pages
• Contact pages
• Homepage

Visitors Reaching Money Pages
For e-commerce websites, tracking the cart would also be useful. To do this, install “Advanced eCommerce Tracking.”

Hotjar provides advanced visualization, making the tracking process as seamless as it gets. If you are a large business, you may wish to consider a paid plan, as it will unlock additional options, such as are behavior, advanced recordings, conversion funnels, feedback, incoming feedback, feedback polls and surveys.

Heatmaps show what the user is looking for by representing the clicks, taps and scrolling behavior visually. Visitor recordings show real visitor behavior and conversion funnels, where visitors are dropping off.

Tracking Money Pages
Tracking money pages is one of the most successful strategies for boosting your ROI. It is recommended to track the number of visitors reaching your sales- and “contact us” pages, as well as your cart, if you run an eCommerce store.

If the latter applies to you, make certain to install Advanced eCommerce Tracking in Google Analytics. Here is how to do it:

• Go to Google Analytics
• Select goals
• Add a new goal 
• Set up a custom call
• Select destination
• Enter the URL you wish to track
• Verify goal
• Save

If your website has a clear user path, set up a goal following the above-mentioned steps, then turn the toggle for funnel to the on position. This strategy tracks the visitors arriving from a certain page.

Google Tag Manager can be used for tracking events, clicks, form submissions, etc.

Track Conversions With the Help of AdWords
AdWords users have an additional tracking method at their disposal. Namely, optimizing AdWords campaigns accounts to up to two thirds of overall success. Use Google Tag Manager to  help you with the setup. 

The Importance of Conversion Tracking
Everything considered, it is obvious that conversion tracking is absolutely crucial. It helps with insights and allows for creating a targeted strategy, to name a few reasons only. Defining conversion goals will help you better understand what to do with the insights, but that just might prove to be too generalized a notion.

In a little bit more detail, here is how you can use the conversion tracking insights to boost your sales and improve your business’ overall performance.

Notably, conversion tracking helps with:

• ROI tracking (how much you need to invest before a visitor becomes a customer)
• Discovering important content (most visited pages can be repurposed, refreshed and re-used)
• Improving segmentation (prevent unsubscriptions and customers discontent by using the insights from conversion tracking)
• Creating better content in the future (use conversion tracking insights to cater to visitors’ needs)
• Use your funds more efficiently (save money on marketing by using conversion tracking insights. It’s rather simple, as you only need observe which campaigns fare best)
• Build historical data (comparing insights as you go will allow you to determine what content has worked so far)

Additional ideas may come to mind. Don’t disregard them! Remember that each business is unique, and not everyone uses the same strategy.

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Bottom line, knowledge is the key to long-term success. The statement is as true in marketing as it is in every other aspect of life.

Polish your campaign tracking methods for optimum results. There is truly no deeper wisdom to it.
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