Any digital marketing campaign shares the same objective: to get people to take action. And once they do, you would want them to become your customers, and ultimately, your lifelong fans.
This is what conversion is all about. While your website visitors do not contribute to your sales, they are “taking action” by showing interest to know more about your products and services, which makes them a great lead.
Conversion rates are crucial to the success of your business online. If you’re not tracking them, then your marketing strategies aren’t likely to generate the results you’re aiming for. Many marketers, webmasters, and business owners use Google Analytics for website tracking.
Read on as we explain everything you need to know about conversion tracking:
What is a conversion?
A conversion happens when your website visitor takes an action that is valuable to your business and “converts” into a customer.
Before you can track your conversions, you need to set up goals in Google Analytics first. This refers to specific user interactions that measure how well your website achieves your objectives. Examples include form submissions, account creations, and online purchases.
If a site visitor completes the specific activity that you’ve defined as a goal, Google Analytics will count it as a conversion.
Why does conversion tracking matter?
Everything you do in SEO is meant to make your site visitor convert into paying customers. If you are not tracking your results, how will you know if your business is on the right track? If you can’t understand how users are interacting with your site, then you’re just pouring your time and effort down the drain.
Here are other reasons conversion tracking is important:
It can reveal the strengths and weaknesses of your campaign
You can use your conversion rate to determine what’s effective and what needs urgent attention on your website, so you can make the necessary improvements as you go. You can pinpoint the type of content that resonates the most with your audience, detect technical errors that may be stopping your visitors from accomplishing a goal, and more.
Optimising conversion rates is more cost-effective than increasing targeted traffic
Many business owners make the mistake of generating high traffic to their unoptimised website through paid ads, thinking that the more they capture the attention of their audience, the more they will make sales. What they don’t realise is that their visitors are likely to leave their website because of the “friction points” in their conversion funnel that need to be fixed first, thus rendering their efforts useless.
Unless you have a search engine-friendly website and you need fast results, it’s better to focus on the traffic you already have. Tracking and optimising your conversion rates can significantly drive your ROI up and your cost per acquisition down.
It helps you allocate your resources better
As you make ongoing improvements in your SEO efforts, you can achieve higher conversion rates in the long run. This, in turn, will result in more cost savings. You can use this for other aspects of your business, such as expanding your product selection or opening new physical locations.
If you’re unsure where to start, we can help you install Google Analytics on your website. We will configure your account and set up your tracking code to get started.
What are the different types of goals/conversions?
There are four types of goals you can set in Google Analytics, which are:
- Destination. Destination goals are triggered every time a visitor lands on a specific page on your website. They are commonly used for tracking the number of users that arrive on your add to cart pages, order confirmation pages, and thank you pages.
- Duration. Duration goals track the amount of time a user spends on your page before leaving your site. You can use this to gauge user engagement.
- Pages/Screen Per Session. Pages goals are similar to duration goals. Instead of tracking the time, they track the number of pages each user views before leaving your website.
- Event. Event goals monitor site visitor interactions on your website, such as click-to-call phone numbers, eBook downloads, and form submissions.
How to set up conversion tracking?
- After signing into your Google Analytics account, find Admin at the bottom of the left-hand sidebar menu.
- Clicking Admin will open a three-column page where various options are categorised by Account, Property, and View. Under the View column, select Goals then click the +New Goal.
- Under Goal Setup, you can either choose a pre-configured template that fits your objectives or a custom one. Then, click continue.
- Enter the name of your goal. This can be anything that will help you recall the conversion you’re tracking. Afterwards, choose your goal type.
- The following prompt will depend on the type of goal you choose. The screenshot below shows what the destination goal setup looks like.
- Here, you need to add your destination URL which will trigger your goal. “Thank you” pages are commonly used for contact form submissions. You can also specify Value, which refers to the monetary value to the conversion, and Funnel, which is the path you expect your website visitors will take towards the destination, but both of these are optional.
- Click the Verify link to test and see if you’ve set up your goal properly. Then hit Save.
- You can now start tracking your conversions. In the left-hand sidebar menu, go to Conversion > Goals > Overview.
- You can filter data in your Goals reporting dashboard according to your preferences and download it whenever you need it. You can also get insights on how you can fine-tune your website.
How to take full advantage of conversion data?
You can translate your conversion data into actionable insights to improve your SEO efforts. Based on the goals you’ve set, you will see in your reports how different genders, locales, and age groups have contributed to your conversions.
Let’s say you have a landing page that is receiving high traffic but doesn’t result in trial signups or eBook downloads. Maybe it’s because your page doesn’t load fast or it lacks the content they need to make informed decisions. You can use your data to fill the gaps in that particular page and see if you can increase your conversions.
If you have an eCommerce website, perhaps your product pages are working properly but only 2% of your visitors are adding anything to the cart. Or maybe most of your visitors make it to your checkout page, just to drop out in the end because it doesn’t have security measure in place.
By keeping an eye on your conversions, you can make faster and smarter marketing decisions to reach your business goals fast.
Conversion tracking is easier with DigitalMaas
When you take advantage of our digital marketing platform, you can access real-time data and actionable insights so you can take steps to optimise your conversion rates. We have integrated key Google tools, including Analytics, Ads, and Google My Business, to simplify the way you manage your SEO, PPC, and social media campaigns. Once you have conversion tracking in place, you can setup Google Analytics in our platform.
We also have a free website audit tool that will test your site against SEO and SEM best practices. This will help you identify issues that are preventing your audience from converting and keep your online marketing efforts on the right track. Sign up for free to get started.
