During the last two weeks of #MSHUnderReview, we reviewed the basics of calls-to-action and landing pages. This week we’re going to continue with conversions.
We know we need CTAs, landing pages and thank you pages on our website, but how do we figure out how our site’s visitors get to the point of taking action? What happens when a visitor turns into a lead: when, how and where do they convert?
While we could draw broad conclusions based on filled out forms and content downloads, we need to know more to get accurate feedback and direct future conversion efforts.
Fortunately, Google Analytics provides us with the resources to track different conversions (goal conversions and ecommerce conversions). Not to be confused with Conversion Tracking with Google AdWords – which is a free tool that allows you to see what happens after someone clicks on your PPC ads – a conversion in Google Analytics is the “completion of an activity on your site that is important to the success of your business.”
These conversions become extremely important when we are trying to track if, how, and even when visitors get from point A to point B, and what they’re doing once they arrive at the given destination. Figuring out the route visitors take to get from point A to point B will allow you to evaluate the effectiveness of the placement of your CTAs, provide you with information to backup testing different versions of the website, and provide insight about where visitors are converting into leads.
When setting up goal tracking within Analytics, define what actions are important for your business to track. Do you want to know about downloads, form completions or user engagement? Once you determine which actions are the most important to the growth of your business, you’ll be able to establish how effective your website is in fulfilling the given objectives and actions.
Examples of Goal Conversions to Track Include:
- Email subscriptions
- Downloads (ebooks, white papers, other content offers)
- Contact form completions
- Time spent on given pages
- Video views
- Clicks to social media accounts or social media shares
By setting up goals, you can track a variety of conversions. And by tracking said conversions, you’ll have a better idea of what works and what doesn’t work. You can even give goals a monetary value, which can help provide the ROI of specific marketing efforts.
