What is Conversion Tracking?

What action would you like your visitor to take once they get to your website – make a purchase, Signup for your offer, view a key page, or become a lead? Are they doing it?

How much can you afford to pay for each click, and still make a profit on your Pay Per Click Advertising campaign?

These important questions can be answered by adding Google’s Conversion Tracking to your AdWords Analytics package.

Adding Conversion Tracking will create 4 more columns on your Ad Group’s Analytics Dashboard.

Conversion columns

  1. Conv. (1 per click): counts one conversion for every click that results in a conversion within 30 days.
  2. Cost/Conv. (1 per click): cost per conversion gives approximate cost of acquiring a new customer or lead.
  3. Conv. Rate (1 per click): this is the number of conversions divided by total clicks. It represents how often a click on your ad results in a conversion.
  4. View-through Conv.: measures when a conversion occurs after a customer has viewed an ad, but did not clicked on it.

Set Up Conversion Tracking in your AdWords Account

1. Open your AdWords account.

2. Select “Conversions” from the “Tools and Analysis” pull down menu.

Select Conversion

3. Click “New Conversion”.

New Conversion

4. Name your conversion, and select whether you are trying to get visitors to go to a webpage, make a phone call, or download an app.

5. Settings:

  • Select your category of conversion: Sale, Sign Up, Lead, or View a Key Page.
  • Security Level: Http or Https – you can tell by looking at the page URL if you are uncertain.
  • Markup Language for your site.
  • Conversion Value: this is an optional value – how much do you make each time someone converts? This can be easy to determine if you’re conversion is the sale of a product, but may be more difficult with other conversions. This number can be added later if you’re unsure of it now.
  • Tracking Indicator: The tracking indicator is recommended by Google, but is optional. Enabling it allows for a small message to appear on your website informing visitors that they are being tracked.

Conversion tracking settings

6. Select the radio button that reflects whether you, or someone else, will be adding the code to your website. If you use WordPress for your website, you will be able to add it yourself after reading the rest of this post.

Google will produce a snippet of code to be added to your website. Copy the code.

Note: the code is added to the page that the visitor will be sent to after they finish converting. For example, if my goal is to have the visitor sign up for my newsletter, then the code will be added to the “Thank you for Subscribing” page that they will be sent to after they submit their subscription.

Adding Conversion Tracking Code to a WordPress.org Website

Adding the snippet of code to a WordPress website is actually fairly simple:

1. Sign in to your WordPress dashboard

2. Go to “Add New Plug-ins”

Add Plugins

3. Search “Smart Google Code”

4. Install and Activate the plug-in

5. You will find the active “Smart Google Code” plug-in near the bottom of the Dashboard’s left-hand side navigation. Click on it and scroll down the page.

6. Label your conversion tracking, paste the snippet of code in the box, and select the page that code should appear on from the drop down menu (remember it should be the page that the visitor is directed to after they complete the conversion).

Conversion code snippett

That’s all there is to it! Give it about 24 hours, then check into your Google Adwords account to see if it is recording data.

If you would like to learn more about Conversion tracking or other advanced AdWord strategies, join me on Wednesday, October 10th, 2012 for a Free Webinar: Advanced AdWord Strategies: How to NOT Lose Money with PPC Advertising.

As always, questions and comments are welcomed and appreciated.