Conversion Tracking & Why It’s So Important

Welcome to my new blog series, Your Morning Coffee Guide to…, which will cover a range of topics and aim to give you a comprehensive, bite-size overview of a certain subject. All whilst enjoying your morning coffee (tea is acceptable too).

Don’t worry, the series isn’t going to be interlinked so you can read as much or as little as you like. In my first post, I will be delving into conversion tracking, what it entails and why it’s vitally important to your digital marketing strategy.

What Is Conversion Tracking?

It is known under a few different names such as goal tracking, event tracking etc but we like to call it conversion tracking (I’ll come onto why in a bit).

Essentially, conversion tracking is tracking how someone interacts with your website and ultimately whether they convert or not. When we talk about conversion we’re referring to someone getting in touch with your business in some kind of way. That might be via telephone, email, submitting a contact form or by making a purchase.

What Does It Look Like?

Conversion tracking can come in many different forms. But more often than not you’ll be using Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager to set up most of your conversion tracking. There are Facebook and LinkedIn Pixels that can be integrated too. Make sure you have your Google Analytics functioning correctly and you have a Google Tag Manager account setup.

What Can We Track?

The truth is, we can track absolutely anything but it’s important to make sure you’re tracking things that ultimately mean a chance of revenue for your business. In the past, we’ve seen plenty of conversion tracking horror shows and it’s vital to make sure you don’t fall under that category as well. A simple audit by yourself or an expert can be valuable in the long run.

The main things that we’d recommend tracking (they should already be in place) on your website are as follows:

📞 Telephone Link Clicks

This will help us understand how many calls are coming through via the website on a monthly basis. Note that we’re tracking clicks on the phone number here and not actual phone calls. There is plenty of folk out there that still write the number down using a good old pad & pen.

📧 Mailto Link Clicks

Email links are also important to track as well. This could result in someone emailing you about your services or asking for further information. Again, like the above we’re tracking clicks here.

📍 Contact Forms

When contact forms are submitted it is usually a sign that someone is getting in touch with you about your services. If you have multiple contact forms on your website it is recommended that you track each one individually if they differ in any way. For example, you would track a quote request form separately to a main contact form.

💷 Sales/Purchases

Not everyone’s website is eCommerce but if yours is whilst it’s nice seeing the £££ in your account you also want to know where those £££ are coming from.

📥 Brochure Downloads, PDF’s

If you have brochure downloads on your site or information PDF’s it’s most definitely worth tracking these. Whether you capture people’s information or not when they’re downloaded, I’d recommend tracking them in order to see how people are interacting with your website.

There are also some bad examples of conversion tracking too:

👀Page Views

If you have brochure downloads on your site or information PDF’s it’s most definitely worth tracking these. Whether you capture people’s information or not when they’re downloaded, I’d recommend tracking them in order to see how people are interacting with your website.

🔘All Button Clicks

In the past I’ve seen conversions configured to fire every time ANY button on the site is clicked. Much like the above, this causes conversions to balloon because people are moving around the site.

⏱ Time on Site

This is a classic! I’ve seen plenty of conversions set up for people spending longer than 10 seconds on a site. We can see that in average time on site and certainly don’t need to fire a conversion every time someone stays for 10 seconds or more.

Why Is Conversion Tracking Important?

Now to the ultimate question. Conversion tracking is important as it helps us as marketers and business owners to understand how people interact with our websites. It can also help make data-driven decisions and help us understand the ROI we’re getting from our investments, a few examples:

💡With conversion tracking in place, we can understand how each specific marketing channel is performing.

💡If you’re running Google Ads you’re able to see exactly what someone searched to find your business.

💡You’re able to set improvement targets for your marketing department based on conversions.

How Do We Track Conversions?

It is quite an art and I would recommend a Google Partner Agency to help you out with conversion tracking as there’s a lot that can go wrong. However, if you were to have a stab at it yourself then Hallam Internet have a great article on how to track mailto and telephone links.

Tracking You To track other conversions such as form submissions and purchases, why not give us a call?

If you would like a FREE no-obligation conversion tracking audit then please email team@biggundigital.co.uk with the subject line “Free Conversion Tracking Audit” and your company details and we’ll get in touch with you ASAP.

Your Morning ☕ Coffee Guide To…

Conversion Tracking & Why It’s So Important

What Is Conversion Tracking?

What Does It Look Like?