How does conversion measurement work? Advantages, types of tags and setting methods

In this article, we will explain the advantages of conversion measurement, the types of tags, and how to set them.

We will also introduce a case where the number of conversions on the management screen and the actual number of conversions do not match when measuring, so let’s understand how tags work.

If you can accurately measure and analyze conversions, you can derive strategies that produce results in marketing.

Table of Contents

Conversion tracking is a tool that measures what path a user took to convert after clicking on your company’s ad.

Conversion measurement is implemented to improve conversion rate

The conversion rate is the most important factor in managing web advertising. However, it may be difficult to improve results simply by looking at the conversion rate alone.

For example, let’s say you run a physical store. What is the first thing you do when you see most of your customers leaving the store without buying anything?

Perhaps, after confirming the behavior of users in the store, they should change the arrangement of products, create pop advertisements, distribute flyers and coupons.

Improving your website is no different. Rather than just looking at the results, it is standard practice to think about improvement measures after confirming user behavior. Conversion measurement settings are necessary in order to know what pages and how many times the users who arrived at the website viewed, whether they converted in the end, and whether they left at some point.

The point is, you should track not only users who convert, but also non-converting user behavior. Considering why they didn’t convert clarifies the issue.

Conversion tracking is available free of charge if you have installed Google Ads. Conversions cannot be measured at the same time you start using the tool, so you need to set it yourself.

According to a survey conducted by Disruptive Adnertising (a digital marketing company based in the United States), 42% of the 2,000 accounts that have introduced Google Adwords (currently Google Ads) have not set up conversion tracking. It seems that

Moreover, only half of the 58% of companies that have implemented it actually have proper conversion tracking.

Surprisingly, many companies did not set conversion measurement. If you are worried that your company may not have set it, you may want to check it once.

How does conversion tracking know that I “converted”? A quick explanation of how conversion tracking works.

① Embed the conversion tracking code snippet (tag) in the web page

For example, let’s say you define “whether or not you converted is to submit a completed input form and display a thank you page”. Embed the conversion tracking snippet on your thank you page.

(2) When a user clicks on a display advertisement or search-linked advertisement, a cookie is temporarily stored on the PC.

A cookie is data that stores a history of visits and clicks on the user’s browser or hard disk when the user visits a website or clicks on an advertisement. By using cookies, the website can identify users.

③Conversions are counted when users take defined actions

The thank you page was displayed when the user submitted the input form after filling it out. So the system recognizes the cookie through a code snippet. So the conversion is recorded as “1”.

Conversion tracking uses this mechanism to identify and track users. In addition, even if a conversion is made on a different device or browser than when the ad was clicked, it can be measured as a single user, so you can accurately understand the behavior of the user.

I hope you understand how important conversion tracking is. Let’s take a closer look at the benefits of setting this up.

There are two main advantages of conversion tracking.

1. Choose cost-effective ads and keywords
2. Can improve user experience (UX)

Advantage 1: You can choose cost-effective ads and keywords with conversion tracking

Comparing the number of ad clicks and conversions alone does not give an accurate result. Here, we will explain the role conversion tracking plays in Search Ads and Display Ads.

For example, let’s assume that you advertised with “MA BtoB” and “MA Tools Free” and got the following results.

Keyword B has more clicks, but keyword A has more conversions. The conversion rate is 4% for keyword A and 1.7% for keyword B.

Which keyword, A or B, is considered to be more effective?

What you should see here is the CPA at the bottom. CPA is the cost per conversion and is a measure of the cost-effectiveness of advertising. It can be obtained by the following formula.

CPA = cost / number of conversions

This indicator is used when “conversion” cannot be measured as sales amount, such as BtoB business.　

Comparing this example, you can see that keyword B, which costs 2,222 yen, is more cost-effective than keyword A, which costs 5,000 yen per conversion.

With conversion tracking that can be tracked by keyword, you can find out which keywords are most cost-effective. You can determine which keywords you should focus on and which ones are not worth your ad spend.

Know where to place your ad with high cost-effectiveness

By comparing the CPA of display ads in the same way, you can understand the effective ads.

Let’s assume here that the same display ad is placed on site A and site B.

What if you simply compared the number of clicks on the two ads and decided that site B was not working as well and stopped running the ad? Advertisements will continue to be placed on site A, which is less cost-effective.

If you use conversion tracking, you will be able to take measures such as stopping advertising on sites that are not profitable for advertising costs.

Advantage ② User experience (UX) can be improved

By using conversion tracking, you can analyze which ads and search keywords lead to a website and convert, or whether they left in the middle.

Conversion tracking data shows where users leave. There is a high possibility that there is some kind of problem with the page where the exit rate is high even though you want to move to the next page.

For example, the following causes are possible.

Users who access input forms are considered highly motivated users. In spite of this, there is a high possibility that there will be a problem in terms of usability if you leave.

Let’s make a hypothesis while looking at the behavioral data and verify which points are degrading usability.

What kind of user behavior should be measured as a conversion? The five major ones are:

• Purchasing goods and services
• Registration for events and seminars
• Request for materials such as catalogs
• Corporate inquiry
• Register for e-mail magazines and LINE friends

I will explain the outline of each action and the characteristics in measuring conversion.

1. “Purchase” of goods and services

First, the “purchase” of products and services should be prioritized and measured. When operating an EC site or product LP (landing page), the number of actual purchases is an important indicator.

You can accurately measure conversions by setting conversions to a thank you page that appears only when the purchase process is complete.

2. “Application” and “reservation” for events and seminars

If you’re a company that offers events and seminars, you can also set conversions for “registration” and “reservation”. The main use cases are:

• Book a seminar
• Participating in events
• Application for personal interview, etc.

Since it is necessary to confirm and set the date and time in advance, let’s arrange the UIUX so that the date and time settings and input of personal information can be performed smoothly. It is also recommended to encourage users to add LINE friends so that they can communicate through a medium that makes it easier for users to contact them.

Also, after conversion, send a reminder email the day before to prevent withdrawal from participating in the seminar.

3. “Request for materials” such as catalogs

Depending on the website, there are cases where “document request” is set as a conversion. In the case of BtoB companies, it is becoming common to set up free document requests as a conversion point for advertising LPs and owned media.

In most cases, in order to download materials for free, it is necessary to send a form with personal information such as the user’s email address, affiliated company, and job title.

If you try to get detailed user information, if you increase the number of items on the form too much or set up places that are troublesome to fill out, the withdrawal rate will increase. Think of a form format that users can submit without stress.

4. “Inquiry” to the company

“Inquiries” from users to companies can also be a conversion point.

Especially in high-priced products and business-to-business transactions (B2B), there are few cases that lead to purchases out of the blue.

First, focus on the number of inquiries to sales representatives and support, and then consider measures to improve the quality of inquiries while working with the sales department to increase the closing rate.

5. “Registration” for mail magazines and LINE friends

“Registration” to mail magazines and LINE friends can also be set as a conversion. A good example would be a job site. Job sites are accessed by people looking for a job or a part-time job, but they do not necessarily use the service immediately.

In most cases, there is a time lag between when you become interested and when you use the service. Job seekers will also be able to obtain new information by registering for e-mail magazines and LINE friends.

It is recommended for attracting users who are interested but find it troublesome to participate.

“Registration” is also often set on the sites of companies that emphasize improving the repeat rate. Specifically, it is often used by companies that develop the following services.

• Esthetic
• personal gym
• lessons, etc.

As with job postings, it is recommended if you want to continuously send out information.

The following two types of tags are required to track conversions in Google Ads.

• Google tag
• event snippet

While introducing the features and benefits of each tag, I will explain why they are necessary for measuring conversions.

Google tag | Install on all pages

A Google tag is a tag installed on all pages that measure conversions. It has both conversion tag and remarketing tag functions.

A conversion tag is a tag that measures the extent to which the delivered advertisement led to results, and a remarketing tag is a tag that issues a cookie to the individual user who visited the website.

Cookies allow us to store information about users who have visited and information about which advertisements have been clicked. Make sure it is installed on all pages.

Event snippet | Fired on CV completion page

Event snippets are tags used in conjunction with Google tags to track conversions. It is a tag that works with the global site, and is placed under the global site tag in the source code.

It is characterized by being able to measure which advertisements led to conversions. You can also check user attributes and products and services viewed by customers.

Set the event snippet only on the CV (conversion) completion page. When set to other pages, even irrelevant data will be measured. Note that they are handled differently than Google tags.　

Here are the steps to set up conversion tracking in Google Ads.

Conversion settings

① Log in to Google Ads and click Tools and Settings.

Next, select “Conversions” under “Measurement” and click on it.

② Set the conversion action.

First, from the “Conversion Actions” page, click the blue + button on the top left.

③ Select the target to be tracked.

Click here for “website”.

④Create a conversion action for your website.

Once you’ve decided which conversions you want to track, enter them in the “Action Name” field. You can set “free trial application”, “white paper download”, etc.

⑤ Decide what to measure.

Pull down “Select” and select the appropriate category. The image is pulled down.

⑥ Next, set the value. This “value” indicates how to set the value of some set conversions.

For example, let’s say you set up three conversions: “Newsletter registration”, “White paper download”, and “Document request”.

Decide if these three values ​​should be “1:1:1” or if the three conversion values ​​should be set with a slope such as “1:2:3”. If you only want to count the number of conversions, check “Do not use”.

⑦ Decide how to count clicks.

Indicates whether a click is counted as a “first time only” conversion or every click.

For actions that only require a one-time conversion, such as member registration or newsletter sign-up, select First Time Only. For conversions that are repeated many times, such as “purchase” or “download”, check “All”.

⑧ Select the measurement period

The first “measurement period” indicates the number of days to be measured from the time the user clicks on the ad. The default is 30 days, but you can choose from 1 to 90 days.

The second “view-through conversion measurement period” is how long you think the first display ad seen by a user has an impact on conversion.

If you set this to ‘1 day’, you can get data if a user who saw a display ad but did not click on the ad converted by another route within 1 day. This can also be set from 1 to 30 days.

“Include in the conversion column” means what to do with the contents of the “conversion column” displayed in the measurement result report. Not including it doesn’t mean it won’t be measured, but smart auto bidding will exclude the excluded data.

An “attribution model” determines what contributed to a user’s conversion. The default “Last Click” emphasizes the contribution of clicks just before conversion.

In addition, among the actions leading up to conversion, there are five attributions, such as the “first click” that emphasizes the contribution of the first trigger, and the “linear model” that considers that all points of contact contributed equally up to conversion. You can choose among view models.

After selecting this, click the “Done” button at the bottom.

Issuance of tracking code

Next, we will issue a tracking code to put on your website.

① Select how to add tags.

If you want to add your own tags,

• Download tags yourself
• Download Google Tag Manager

There are two methods, but here we will explain how to “download tags yourself”.

① Install a Google tag

Choose either to issue a global site tag and paste the tag inside the <head></head> tags of all pages of your website.

(2) Install an event snippet tag

If the set conversion is “page load”, place the event snippet on the page you want to track.

If the set conversion is “click”, place the event snippet tag on the page linked by the click (thanks page such as download).

Once you’ve tagged your website, you’re ready to go.

To see your conversion tracking results, select Reports from the top bar.

From there, select a report to view.

The right part of the table is important for conversion tracking results.

1. Conversions: how many conversions were made through your ad
2. View-through conversions: The number of users who saw a display ad but didn’t click on it and converted within 30 days
3. CPA: The total cost of this campaign divided by the total number of conversions (you can see the cost effectiveness)
4. Conversion Rate: Percentage of clicks that resulted in a conversion. The higher the ratio, the higher the ad/keyword performance.

Before you get used to it, just looking at these four points should give you a clue for improvement.

Here are some things to keep in mind when tracking conversions:

• Possibility of “return conversion”
• Number discrepancies due to “duplicate conversions”

Let’s explain in detail based on the countermeasures for the above cases.

Understand that return conversions occur

When measuring the data, the phenomenon that the actual number of conversions and the number of conversions on the management screen do not match also occurs. When this happens, be suspicious of “return conversions”. A return conversion is the difference between the actual conversion date and the date the conversion is tracked on your ad account.

For example, let’s say a user clicks on your ad on December 22nd and actually buys a product on January 10th. In this case, it will be measured as a conversion for “December” when the ad was clicked.

This is because conversions are counted back to the day you first clicked your ad until 30 days have passed (by default). Even if the number of achievements for December confirmed on January 10th has increased from the same data measured as of January 1st, it is not a measurement error. When this happens, consider the possibility of a return conversion.

Numbers may diverge due to duplicate conversions

In some cases, the numbers do not match due to “duplicate conversions”. Duplicate conversion means that the number of product purchases and the number of materials requested are counted multiple times per person. Let’s explain with a concrete example.

For example, suppose one user purchases one product provided by your company. At that time, I clicked on two advertisements (Google Ads → Facebook Ads) posted by my company. If you follow this route to purchase, the number of conversions on the report will be counted as “2 times”.

However, the number of times the product was actually purchased is one. To know the exact data, try the following measures.

• Find out where the last click was made with Google Analytics
• Also use attribution measurement tools

Even if the error is slight, it is important to identify the cause.

If your users are getting a lot of clicks but not converting, conversion tracking can help you find ways to improve.

Data obtained from conversion measurement

• Understand user behavior within the site
• Whether the display destination of the web advertisement is appropriate
• Bounce rate from landing page
• Conversion rate of content viewers

etc., can be grasped.

By acquiring data, you can understand user needs and take better measures according to the flow of the customer journey.

Conversion measurement, which tracks user website behavior up to conversion, is also an opportunity to find important prospects with high LTV.