Conversion tracking in Google Ads accounts helps you figure out if your present efforts are yielding the results you want. This post goes through the most important advantages of tracking your campaign conversions, the value of conversion tracking to your business, and how to utilize its power for long-term growth.
What is conversion tracking?
Conversion tracking is the procedure by which a mobile measurement partner tracks a defined data element within a mobile app. When an advertiser works with an ad platform, for example, they may utilize conversion tracking to figure out what data points are reached by the people they attract.
So, you’ve begun advertising on Google and have a nice number of advertisements up – wonderful job! Of course, you’d want to know how effective your ads are in terms of the reasons why you set them up in the first place.
Perhaps you were seeking to improve the number of visitors to a certain landing page, boost the views of a video, increase newsletter sign-ups, or increase sales on your website?
Whatever it is, you won’t find out how many of these advertising resulted in the outcomes you were looking for unless you start using conversion tracking software! You may use conversion tracking to figure out how people are interacting with your advertisements.
Based on these findings, you’ll be able to fine-tune your campaigns to drive more traffic to your website, receive more calls, and create more consumers! But first, it’s vital that you understand what a conversion is.
What are conversions and what is conversion tracking?
With conversion tracking, you may track what happens afterward when a customer interacts with your advertisements – whether they bought something, joined your newsletter, made a call to your business, or downloaded your app. When a consumer performs an activity that you’ve labeled as “valuable,” it’s known as a conversion.
You’ll select how many and which kinds of conversions you want to track depending on the importance of your company’s activity. You don’t need to keep track of every conversion objective you can choose, but it is often beneficial to collect useful information. Even though you may not ‘need’ the data right now, it might be helpful in the future!
Why should you use conversion tracking?
The ultimate goal of conversion tracking is to see how effective your advertisements are in terms of consumer engagements and conversion objectives. When tracking conversions, you’ll be able to:
• Identifying which keywords, advertisements, ad groups, and campaigns are performing best for obtaining the conversions you want is critical.
• Understand your return on investment (ROI), which allows you to make more informed decisions regarding your advertising budget for the future.
• Use a variety of Smart Bidding techniques to instantly improve your campaigns based on your conversion goals.
• Before they convert, figure out what path your customers are going down. This may vary depending on (i.e.) different devices and/or browsers.
How does conversion tracking work?
The first step in the process of conversion tracking is to create a Conversion Tracker in your TNA Suite or Google Ads account. You can monitor the following sorts of activities with conversion tracking:
• Website actions: Customers’ activities on your website, such as purchases, sign-ups, and other actions.
• Phone calls: Calls directly from your advertisements, calls to a phone number on your website, and clicks on a mobile website phone number.
• App installs and in-app actions: Installs of your Android and iOS mobile apps, as well as purchases or other activity within those applications.
• Import: When a consumer starts and completes their buying process online, it’s known as an internet purchase. An example is when a client clicks advertising and submits a contact form online before signing a contract with you in the office.
• Local actions: When people engage with an ad that is relevant to a specific physical location or business, it’s measured.
Technically, the conversion tracking technique is different for each type of conversion. Aside from offline conversions, there are a number of other types.
however, it usually works like this:
• Conversions tracked with manually placed tracking tags
Add a conversion tracking tag, also known as a code snippet, to your website or mobile app. When someone clicks on your advertisements from the Google Search results page, a temporary cookie is created on their computer or mobile device.
The conversion tracker will recognize the placed cookie and record a conversion when the person meets the conversion goal you’ve specified.
• Conversion tracked without manually placed tracking tags
You won’t have to manually tag your website or mobile app for some conversions. You may use a Google forwarding phone number to track phone call conversions from your call extension or call-only advertisements.
With this data from your ad, you’ll be able to see how long a call lasts, when it begins and finishes, as well as the caller’s area code.
This is also possible using app downloads and in-app purchases from the Google Play store.
After you’ve completed the installation, you’ll be able to monitor conversion activity for your campaigns, ad groups, ads, and keywords – allowing you to better evaluate how your advertising efforts assist you in reaching your company’s objectives!
It’s time to set up conversion tracking for your Google Search Autopilot campaigns now that you’ve gotten a good handle on conversion tracking.
How to set up your Google Ads Conversion Tracking?
Setting up conversion tracking entails creating a little HTML code in Google Ads that you insert into the website’s page that consumers access immediately after completing the conversion (for example, an “Order Confirmation” or “Thanks for Your Email” page).
To begin, go to Google Ads and choose Tools & Analysis from the drop-down menu. This opens the All conversions page, which you may use as a template. Select Conversions from the drop-down menu on this page to see all conversions. To begin, go to the Conversions tab and click the +Conversion button to construct your first conversion.
You’ll be asked to fill out a form that will assist Google Ads in generating the correct HTML code for you to paste into your website.
Give the conversion a name, such as “Contact Form Submissions” if you wish to keep track of how many times visitors submit information through your site’s Contact Us form.
Next, select the source of the conversion. Your choices are:
1) Webpage – If you want people to do anything on your sites, such as make a purchase or provide contact information, they must be able to engage with the page.
2) Call on-site – If you want site visitors to dial your phone number from a mobile device.
3) App download – If you want people to download your app.
Here’s a more detailed walkthrough of each of the three conversion sources:
1) Webpage Conversions
Select the most precise conversion type from the drop-down menu: Purchase/Sale, Signup, Lead, View of a key page (i.e. the Contact Us page), or Other.
To choose the Markup language, go to Tools > Options and select it from the drop-down menu. HTML is the most widely used markup language, but if you want to use a different one (such as CHTML or XHTML), check with your web developer.
To set up the conversion, type a value for it in the space provided. You may manually enter anything from 10 to whatever you wish to sell; for example, e-books for $10 each. Set up the conversion tracker to record dynamic changes in shopping cart values on your site if you’re selling a lot of various items.
Tracking indicator
The tracking indicator is an unobtrusive message on your site letting visitors know that their visits to your site are being monitored by Google. It’s optional to show it, and you may opt-out of receiving the notification by selecting “Don’t add a notification to the code generated for my page”.
If you choose it (by default, the selection is “yes”), you may replace the stock message with your own, and modify the appearance of the message by choosing font size (single line of text vs. two lines), page background color, and language.
You’ll get an HTML code on the next page that you’ll need to put into your site’s “Thanks for Visiting” page, such as the “Thank You for Visiting” page. If someone else is in charge of updating your website, provide them with the code and detailed instructions.
2) Call On-Site Conversions
If your website allows customers to call your business phone number directly from their smartphones, you can use conversion tracking to track the number of times a call is made. To generate your code, go through the preceding steps, and then manually add “onclick” HTML tags into the code given by Google.
An onclick tag for a simple textphone number looks like this:
Change the phone number to that of your business, and change the Call Now text to whatever message you’d like.
When used with buttons, onclick tags may be used instead of phone numbers.
When you call now, the link will be a custom GIF image (swap out “call_now_button.gif” with the name of your gif file, and change the example phone numbers to your own):
3) App Conversions
Google Ads may keep track of downloads from the Google Play store and, to a lesser extent, iOS app downloads through the Apple App Store.
To set up conversion tracking for an Android app, you’ll need the “Package Name” of the app. Go to the Google Play store and look for the app’s page. Takedown the URL. The package number is found after the details?id= string and before the &feature= string in this case, which is highlighted in yellow.
play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mansdio.android.dartqorldcup.free&feature=more_from_developer
In the Package Name text area, copy and paste that content. Clicking on the “View in Android Market” link should take you to the app’s Google Play page if everything is working properly. If you receive an error or a missing page, double-check your entry.
There is no more code to copy and paste for this one. In approximately 24 hours, Android app conversions should begin tracking.
Google Ads Conversion Tracking Troubleshooting
#1: Conversion columns aren’t showing any data
It might take up to 24 hours for conversion data to show in Google Ads after a page has been changed. If conversions aren’t appearing after 24 hours, it’s possible that no consumers have converted yet.
This is something you could try by going through the conversion motions yourself, such as clicking on your ad when it appears, and completing whatever action is necessary to induce conversions on your site. If after another 24 hours your conversion isn’t showing up, double-check that the HTML code was properly installed.
In order to optimize your website, you may need to install a conversion tracking app or relocate the code to a different location on the page.
#2: Data Isn’t 100% Accurate
Conversion Tracking won’t work if customers don’t have cookies turned on in their browser when they click on your ad and complete the conversion.
Cookies are used on most websites to ensure that visitors do not have to re-enter their information, which is why they’ve turned on by default. If you choose to include the Tracking Indicator link on your website, visitors may opt out of conversion tracking by deleting the conversion tracker cookie.
NOTE: If you modify a conversion’s settings in Google Ads, the code will change, and you’ll have to replace it with the new code on the webpage.
#3: Campaign Receives Many Clicks, But Few Conversions
If the advertising costs more to run than the business is earning back through conversions, such initiatives may be a poor ROI (return on investment) if they attract many clicks but little conversion.
Examine Search Funnels data and examine ad text and keywords to discover why consumers fail to convert once they arrive at your website.
Is the landing page unappealing? Is it difficult for consumers to find their way to the conversion page on your website?
Do the advertisements and keywords create unreasonable expectations about a product that the website does not fulfill (for example, do your advertisements show when a consumer searches for “bargain handbags,” but take them to a website that sells high-priced designer handbags)?
To figure out why people who see your advertisements don’t go all the way, imagine how you’d feel if you were a consumer. Put yourself in the shoes of the client to figure out why they aren’t clicking on your ads.
Conversion Tracking – Next Steps
Tracking your conversions has a long list of advantages: measuring how effectively your campaigns run, seeing how consumers interact with your advertisements and being able to fine-tune them to achieve the results you want!
Got more questions about Google Ads conversion tracking? Leave them in the comments!
