Conversion Tracking: A Beginner's Guide

Your company’s website holds much more marketing power than just a place where potential customers can learn more about your company or purchase a product. While you may have spent time developing a robust marketing strategy for your website, how do you know if your marketing strategy is accomplishing your specific conversion goals and providing you with more business and a high return on investment (ROI)?

In this beginner’s guide, we cover everything you need to know about conversion tracking on your website, including how to clearly define your conversions, set clear objectives, and show you how to accurately measure your website conversions with valuable online tools. It’s time to take your digital strategy to the next level!

What is Conversion Tracking?

Conversion tracking identifies the actions taken by a website visitor, analyzes the results to determine your conversion rate, and assesses if you’ve accomplished your goal. A conversion can come from SEO keywords searched on Google or a website visitor making a purchase or signing up for your newsletter. 

Identifying your website’s conversion points helps you measure them quickly and easily to use the results to increase your return on investment. By finding what is working and what is not, you can properly allocate your time, energy, and money to marketing strategies that help you accomplish your conversion goals. 

In short, any action a website visitor takes on your website can and should be measured.

Identify Your Conversion Tracking Goals 

In order to measure your conversions accurately, you need to set firm conversion goals within a strong marketing plan to direct website visitors to take action to accomplish these goals. Some examples of conversion goals include, but are not limited to:

• Purchasing a product

• Signing up for a newsletter

• Downloading a free ebook 

• Filling out a form to learn more information about your company 

Your conversion goals will vary depending on your business and may evolve over time. We recommend starting with high-value conversion goals that have reliable data feeding into them. For example, high-value goals can be purchases or demo requests. 

Your goals must be specific and measurable to identify how well your website turns visitors into conversions and make adjustments as needed. 

Optimize Your Website

To have conversions to track, you need to optimize your website with SEO keywords and specific calls to action (CTAs) that drive website traffic and engagement. 

By using relevant SEO keywords throughout your website, you will increase website traffic by increasing the likelihood of your website and landing pages showing up in Google search results for that specific keyword. For example, if you are a California-based wedding planning company, using SEO keywords and phrases like “California Wedding Planner” throughout your website will let Google know you are relevant to that search. 

You will also want to include clear CTAs throughout your website. This may come in the form of a pop-up banner offering a website visitor 10% off their first order when signing up for your marketing emails. It can also be as simple as a “Purchase” button located in a consumer’s cart, encouraging them to complete their order. 

Measure Your Conversion Rate 

Once you have your conversion goals outlined and clearly defined, you can track and measure your website conversion rate. To calculate a conversion rate, take the number of conversions divided by the total number of visitors. That would give you a general conversion rate for that desired action. 

However, some valuable online tools and resources can help you track website conversion from Google search engine results to online forms on your website. One of the most popular and effective tools is Google Analytics.

Use Google Analytics as a Conversion Tracking Tool

Google Analytics is a free, valuable tool for conversion tracking because it helps you gather website data and analyze it accurately to find what is working and what is not. Some of the features of Google Analytics include: 

• Measuring site traffic from various sources, such as social media and Google

• Measuring overall site traffic

• Measuring page-specific site traffic

• Measuring specific campaigns using Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) codes 

• Measuring click-through rates from Google search results 

So, instead of having to go into each page of your website and analyze actions taken on each CTA or for each keyword, get started with Google Analytics to receive specific links and data to help you track conversions easily. 

Time to Start Tracking

Conversion tracking helps you measure the success of your website marketing efforts. By identifying which CTAs are earning the most clicks and which SEO keywords are bringing the most traffic to your website, you can focus your efforts, time, and money to create more marketing strategies in and around those areas.

Some of these strategies may include purchasing Google Ads to move your website closer to the top of Google search rankings once you find an SEO keyword or phrase that works well for you. Or you could focus on running a social media ad campaign promoting your website.

Tracking conversions plays an important role in your marketing strategy. By accurately measuring the success of your website and adjusting as needed, you will increase website traffic and receive a high return on your conversion marketing efforts. 

Learn more about how to increase your marketing conversions on your website and how to create ads that convert. 

FAQ

How do I start conversion tracking?

Implementing conversion tracking is easy, especially with the right resources! Generally speaking, you only need a website and the ability to edit your website’s code. For example, with Google Analytics, you simply need to log into your Google Ads account and add the provided code to your website. 

Which conversion goals are right for me?

Let’s say you’re a new business focusing on brand awareness. Your key performance indicators (KPIs) for your conversion goal might include traffic sources, average session duration, and the average number of pages a user visits in a session. As we mentioned before, this should shift to a high-value goal, such as how many website visitors made a purchase. This conversion rate will be vital to your marketing strategy, especially as a new business. 

How do I improve my conversion rate?

It depends on your conversion goals and type of business, but most often, simple things make a big difference. Consider changing your website’s color scheme to make it more appealing or allow your customers to autofill their contact information at checkout for a speedy purchase.

Does conversion tracking work across devices?

It depends on your ad service since conversion tracking recently made strides in cross-device conversions. AdRoll’s “Total Conversions” gives users a complete view of their website conversions. You can use filters to drill down into conversions across devices, segments, countries, and product views to uncover deeper insights about your website visitors.

Last updated on November 8th, 2023.