Tracking Website Conversions
Effectively tracking your site's traffic can help you optimize results
Not all Web activity is created equal. Your website can have massive traffic volume, but if no one buys anything or requests services, you make no profit. And if visitors to your site are the prospects you're looking for, you need to have that information.Conversion tracking can provide this vital insight. At any given time, your site may be receiving traffic from referrals, search engines, pay-per-click campaigns (PPC) and e-mail marketing.
Accurately tracking these sources lets you optimize ads and achieve your desired ROI/CPA goals.
To get started with conversion tracking:
1. Define your goals
2. Install your tracking mechanism
3. Analyze your results
Defining your goals
You must first establish what constitutes a successful "conversion event," i.e. a valuable action completed by one of your site visitors.
The most common conversion types are page views, user registrations, information or price quote requests, lead form submissions and white paper, or free trial downloads.
The most popular conversion type is a purchase. But each type has a value, and when analyzing your data, you may wish to assign a dollar amount to each conversion event, allowing you to calculate a total "conversion value" for your campaigns.
Most conversion tracking systems are designed to be very flexible. You can set your own definition of a conversion and customize your setup to track the events that are important to your business.
Installing a tracking mechanism
Most conversion tracking systems require only a basic grasp of website mechanics to set up.
Typically, your web advertising provider will give you a customized bit of programming language, or "tracking code." Placing this code in a particular web page allows your conversion tracking software to gather vital information about the visitors to that page, including the path they used to get to your site.
Conversion tracking code must be placed properly to assure accuracy. If the code is placed on an order form page instead of the "Thank You for Your Order" page, you will end up measuring interest in your product, not actual purchases.
Analyzing results
Major search providers Google, Bing and Yahoo offer analytics tools to their advertisers. So do many e-mail marketing companies.
Web analytics software is also available to track any online marketing campaigns you are running in-house, or to cross-reference traffic data across multiple sources to calculate overall ROI and conversion costs. The software cannot only tell you how many visitors you have and how they found your site, but the duration and frequency of their visits.
Jason Agard is a senior associate editor at Business.com, the web's largest business-to-business searchable directory and home to more than 35,000 business how-to guides.
Find conversion tracking products and services on Business.com, the internet's largest business-to-business website. Business.com reaches 40+ million users monthly online and is home to more than 35,000 how-to guides that help small business owners solve problems and find opportunities.
Copyright © 2009 Business.com, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright © 2011 Business.com, Inc. All Rights Reserved.