Conversion tracking is used to see whether the traffic that you’ve paid to drive to your site with AdWords actually does what you want it to do. If your site is in the business of selling widgets, then all the click throughs in the world don’t do you any good unless your site visitors buy your widgets. Conversion tracking is a mechanism that helps you understand empirically whether site visitors coming via AdWords are converting (i.e., performing the action you desire), and what percentage of the visitors sent to your site by AdWords do, in fact, convert.
Google’s underlying conversion-tracking mechanism is fairly simple and works as follows:
You add some special Google conversion tracking code to a results page on your site.
You make sure that the results page will open when a visitor is converted, for example, by buying something (in the case of a purchase, the results page usually doubles as an order confirmation).
When a user clicks your AdWords ad, Google adds a cookie to the user’s computer to track the user.
When a user with the Google AdWords cookie on his computer opens the results page, a conversion is logged, and a special tracking message is displayed to the user.
This process is shown in Figure 13-8.
An interesting, and somewhat controversial, feature of Google AdWords conversion tracking is that as part of the tracking, Google notifies users that they are being tracked. This notification is produced by the Google-supplied code you add to the results page. A tracked user sees a message with the title Google Site Stats, and the message includes a “learn more” link back to Google.
Google explains that it prefers to be aboveboard about its actions, and that the “learn more” link is a chance for users to understand Google’s privacy policies and to reject the Google tracking cookie if they wish.
Note
You can choose to omit the message about tracking if you desire; however, Google’s TOS requires that you include information in your site’s privacy statement if this is omitted.
Most major advertising programs do provide conversion tracking options, and not all programs that track users and conversions “brand” the process. Users who click through ads in these other programs never know they are being tracked.
The tracking message Google displays may make some users uneasy, and a few advertisers have decided not to track AdWords conversions. That said, you have to admire the aboveboard aspect of Google’s notification to users that they are, in fact, being tracked.
Note
If you see the “Google Site Stats – learn more” message in the course of your web surfing, it means that a Google AdWords cookie on your computer has tracked a successful conversion.
You can define a conversion in any way you’d like, as long as you can put up a web page that the user opens when the conversion event takes place. The most common conversions are:
- Purchases
The conversion occurs when the user makes the purchase, and the order confirmation page doubles as the results page.
- Lead generation
The conversion takes place when the user provides contact information, and the “A sales representative will be in touch with you shortly” page is also the results page.
- Subscription signup
The conversion takes place when the user signs up to join a community or subscribe to a newsletter; the membership or subscription confirmation page is also the tracking results page.
- Viewing a key page
If the point of your AdWords campaign is to subtly direct users to a specific, crucial page, then that important page can double as a tracking results page.
Note
AdWords conversion tracking uses the same programmatic model as the Google AdSense program (and other contextual content ad programs). The code you embed in your results pages uses JavaScript to set some variables, and then call a script on Google’s servers.
By the very nature of conversion tracking, and the “mash-up” nature of development on the Web, conversion tracking has to coexist with a variety of technologies used for e-commerce and web deployment. The bottom line is that you can use Google’s conversion tracking in any web page that can work with JavaScript—which is almost any web page. Essentially, the way it works is more or less the same regardless of the technology that serves or generates the pages: you use Google AdWords to generate the conversion tracking JavaScript code, which you embed in a results page on your site.
Google specifically expects conversion tracking to be used with sites that use the following technologies:
Note
As an example, I will show how to add conversion tracking to a PayPal Buy Now button for purchases, and to a PHP page for users who open this key page. Implementing conversion tracking works comparably for these other technologies—just add the Google-generated JavaScript code to your results page.
It’s up to you to create a results page and have it up on your site. Google will not do this for you. (Of course, if you are selling goods or services, you probably already have an order confirmation page!)
Under the Reporting tab, you can view all the conversion tracking reporting, edit existing actions, or create new actions (Figure 13-9).
There are a number of reasons why you may not be able to install the AdWords conversion code or you require more advanced tracking such as Event Tracking events. Google AdWords now allows you to link your Google Analytics goals to your AdWords conversions to allow more effective campaign management and better ROI from your campaign. This will not import historical data from your account, but it will start importing from the day that you link the accounts, and based on existing campaigns the Goals data will begin appearing after approximately one to two weeks.
Google AdWords has recently released a new feature to improve measurement of conversions for display advertising running on the Google content network. The view-through conversions report can assist with brand awareness campaigns where the ad is seen but not immediately clicked on. The conversion can occur within 30 days of the display ad appearing—but no click generated—and can attribute a single impression to multiple view-through conversion events.
Note
The view-through reporting follows the industry standard of last click, last impression.
You can easily track conversions defined as the user making a purchase by clicking a PayPal Buy Now button. The possibilities are to add a new Buy Now button to your page and use it to track conversions, or add a conversion tracking mechanism to an existing Buy Now button.
Note
You can track conversions made by purchases in a PayPal shopping cart in much the same fashion as with the PayPal Buy Now button.
The first part of the process of adding conversion tracking code is to use AdWords to generate the AdWords JavaScript code you’ll need.
To get this code, select Conversions from the Reporting tab drop-down list. Click “New conversion,” and give the conversion action a name so that you’ll be able to find it later. Next, select the type of the action from the Tracking Purpose drop-down box. The choices are:
Other
Purchase/Sale
Signup
Lead
View of a key page
Click “Save and continue.” The Code Settings window, shown in Figure 13-10, will open.
You can state the value of each conversion to you. It’s helpful to do this, although variable values can also be used in code.
Indicate the security level of the results page, the language, and the formatting of the tracking message. You can also choose to omit the tracking message by selecting the None radio button.
Click “Save and get code.” The Code page, shown in Figure 13-11, will open.
Grab the JavaScript code shown and paste it into the body of your “action” page (the page the users reach when they have converted, for example, by buying something). For this example, I named the page confirmation.html.
Note
If you don’t maintain your own website, and someone else is updating your website code, you can send this code snippet to them by clicking “Send conversion tracking code to somebody else.”
Here’s a sample of what this code looks like (of course, the conversion ID and label will be different for your own pages):
<!-- Google Code for Buying Conversion Page --> <script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript"> <!-- var google_conversion_id = 1070313714; var google_conversion_language = "en_US"; var google_conversion_format = "1"; var google_conversion_color = "ffffff"; var google_conversion_label = "oeR6COTFnAEQ8uGu_gM"; //--> </script> <script language="JavaScript" src="http://www.googleadservices.com/pagead/conversion.js"> </script> <noscript> <img height="1" width="1" border="0" src= "http://www.googleadservices.com/pagead/conversion/1070313714/?label=oeR6COTFnA EQ8uGu_gM&guid=ON&script=0"/> </noscript>
Make sure the page has been loaded on your web server.
Next, log in to your PayPal account. Click the Merchant Services tab. Expand the Website Payments Standard link shown in the Business Solutions area (on the left of Figure 13-12).
Click the Buy Now Button link, and configure your button as you’d like—for example, by setting a price and choosing from the button graphics that PayPal makes available.
Note
You can add AdWords conversion tracking features to any kind of PayPal button or cart; this example shows a single Buy Now button to keep things simple.
Next, expand Customize Advanced features. In the Customize Buyer’s Experience area, locate “Take customer to a specific page (URL) after successful checkout,” shown in Figure 13-13. Make sure the box is checked and enter the address of your conversion page.
Click Create Button, and the HTML form code for your PayPal button (including the reference to the tracking results page) will be generated for you, as shown in Figure 13-14.
Copy and paste the PayPal code into your web page used to make purchases and upload the page to your web server.
Depending on the graphics you chose for your Buy Now button and the layout for your page, your site visitors will see a page that looks something like Figure 13-15.
When the user successfully completes a purchase using the PayPal Buy Now button, the results tracking page (confirmation.html) shown in Figure 13-16 opens.
The final step, of course, is to test that conversion tracking is actually working. You can wait for a user to click through from an AdWords ad and complete a transaction. You’ll then see the conversion in your Campaign Summary (and your reports) with a time delay (of up to about 24 hours).
You can also initiate a conversion tracking test yourself, but it will cost you for the clicks you make.
First, search Google for one of your ads. Click through your own ad (this is not illegal, but it will cost you for the click!).
Next, open the results page. Note that since you know the address for the results page, such as http://www.digitalfieldguide.com/confirmation.html, you don’t have to actually use the Buy Now PayPal button—just open the results page.
Your actions will record a conversion, which will show up in the AdWords Campaign Summary and AdWords reports after the time delay.
Suppose you are not quite so concerned with whether visitors actually make a purchase; you just want to determine whether site visitors are visiting a key page.
For example, part of the strategy of the AdWords campaign that sends traffic to the Photoblog 2.0 at http://www.digitalfieldguide.com/blog/ is that some of this traffic will migrate along internal site links to the page that provides information about image licensing, http://www.digitalfieldguide.com/licensing.php. It would be nice to know how many of the AdWords-driven visitors to the photo blog are actually interested in paying for an image license. Using AdWords conversion tracking, it’s easy to find this out.
The first step is to generate new conversion tracking code, by choosing “View of a key page” as the conversion tracking type in the definition of the conversion action (Figure 13-17).
Figure 13-17. Choose “View of a key page” if you want to track how many users migrate from an AdWords click through to a specific page on your site
Note
It probably doesn’t make much sense to assign a value to this kind of “conversion.” As opposed to a purchase, there is no clear value to a site view, even if it is something useful to track.
Click “Save action and get code,” and copy and paste the conversion tracking code into the key results page. Here’s the code:
<!-- Google Code for licensing Conversion Page --> <script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript"> <!-- var google_conversion_id = 1070313714; var google_conversion_language = "en_US"; var google_conversion_format = "1"; var google_conversion_color = "ffffff"; var google_conversion_label = "eeuJCL7GnAEQ8uGu_gM"; //--> </script> <script language="JavaScript" src="http://www.googleadservices.com/pagead/conversion.js"> </script> <noscript> <img height="1" width="1" border="0" src="http://www.googleadservices.com/pagead/conversion/1070313714/?label=eeuJCL7GnA EQ8uGu_gM&guid="ON&script=0-id001"/> </noscript>