Conversion tracking – a very important term for advertisers in e-commerce. The success of advertising measures can be assessed much better with the help of conversion tracking. Depending on how well you have implemented conversion tracking, comparing the resources used with the sales achieved is even possible.
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Conversion Tracking Basics
Where Can Conversion Tracking Be Used?
As already mentioned, the typical area of application of conversion tracking can be found in e-commerce. Conversion tracking can be used to track whether promotions have led to a sale. It is also possible to track the value of the sale. This results in a lot of optimization possibilities for the marketer.
Furthermore, you can determine after a short time whether a campaign is achieving the intended success or not. You can then react quickly and, for example, increase or decrease the advertising budget or even end the campaign completely. If you know the exact profit of the products you sell, you can maximize your profit with the help of conversion tracking.
Where The Use Of Conversion Tracking Can Be Problematic
However, there are industries in which conversion tracking is difficult – or at first, appears to be completely inappropriate.
Especially in service areas, in which it is mainly about individual offers (mechanical engineering, construction projects, marketing, web design, recruitment), you cannot easily implement conversion tracking as you could in an online shop.
Alternatives Can Always Be Found
So what should companies do in such a field? The answer sounds simple, but it is not always immediately obvious: Find alternatives. Every company has options that can be used to identify at least one tendency.
Micro Conversions
Micro-conversions do not have the meaningfulness of a full “conversion,” but they do allow the advertising company to assess whether the campaign will bring anything at all. Micro conversions can look very different. A few are briefly presented below:
Pageviews – You can orientate yourself on the average number of pages that are viewed per user. If you define a limit above which a user appears particularly interested, you can classify page views above the limit as a conversion.
Length of stay – The same applies to the length of stay on the company’s website.
Clicked links – clicks can also be evaluated very well as an indicator of a user’s interest. You should also first observe how many internal links are called on average, and only then should you define limits.
Submitted contact form – Depending on the technology used, you can track the sending of a contact form/registration form/information form and evaluate it as a conversion.
Calling up the contact area – If the technology used does not allow it, there is still the option of calling up the contact page as a conversion.
Be Careful With Interpretation
Of course, when using micro-conversions, you always have to be careful when interpreting the data. This interpretation should be left to experts who can also interpret the numbers. Some micro-conversions are less critical (sent contact forms) than others (dwell time, clicked links).
What Do I Need To Be Able To Perform Conversion Tracking?
I am holding back with the technical details – it is usually sufficient to use Google Analytics and possibly also use Google Tag Manager. Most companies should already be completely satisfied with this.
Conversion Tracking On Google AdWords
Of course, conversion tracking is possible with Google AdWords and with Facebook, Linked In, Bing Ads, and many other services. However, we limit ourselves to Google AdWords in this article – anything else would lead too far.
Advantages
The general advantages of conversion tracking naturally also apply to Google AdWords. However, Google offers a few useful additional functions when using conversion tracking.
The biggest advantage of using conversion tracking is the ability to use other bid strategies.
Maximize conversions – Google tries to set the bids with the help of “machine learning” so that conversions are maximized (analog: maximize clicks).
Goal CPA – Cost-Per-Acquisition. Google sets the bids so that as many conversions as possible take place, taking the average target CPA into account.
Goal ROAS – return on advertising spent. Google sets its bids so that conversions are maximized, but the ROAS is not exceeded.
Furthermore, it is very easy to see which ad group or keyword triggered conversions when using Google AdWords. A detailed breakdown and analysis are no problem here and can be used to optimize the campaigns further.
You can also create / import conversions that are not “counted.” Assuming you create a conversion for calling up a 5-page contact form and a conversion for the final submission, it makes sense not to let the call-up of the contact form “count.” This means that the bid strategies mentioned above are only applied to the final conversion (sending the contact form). However, calling up the contact form can still be displayed.
Analyze Conversions
If you use Google Analytics and have set goals, you have extensive analysis options. In this way, you can understand which channel is the most promising and separate it by day of the week or month, compare different devices, or examine the conversion behavior of different traffic sources (paid search, social networks, organic traffic). Funnel visualizations and the representation of the target project flow are also possible.
Conclusion
Conversion tracking makes sense for most businesses. There are exceptions where it is difficult to create micro-conversions yourself, but for the majority, it is possible. Whether because of SEA or to check how the website is being used – conversion tracking is a powerful tool for optimization.
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