Whenever I’m running a digital marketing campaign for my clients, one of the skills I rely on is conversion rate optimization. This is the process of ensuring that visitors to a website are directed to a particular task that I would like them to perform. Maybe I want them to make a purchase so I look into converting them into customers. Or maybe I want to increase the number of subscribers to a clients’ newsletter.
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) requires one to understand customers and subsequently influence their behavior or pattern on a particular webpage. For CRO to be more effective, I need to set up the right conversion tracking. This will show me what happens after a customer interacts with certain ads on a webpage i.e. do they sign up for the clients’ newsletter, purchase a product, book an appointment or call the business for more information. That’s what converting is all about.
Common Conversion Tracking Issues
One of the best tips I received when starting out is to never start a digital marketing campaign without first setting up website conversion tracking. Otherwise, how would I analyze the marketing campaign’s performance and know what to optimize?
Setting up conversion tracking isn’t easy and there are common issues that are likely to crop up either when setting up the tracking code or when tracking the actual conversions. I’d like to highlight a few examples of each:
Common mistakes made when setting up tracking code
Digital marketers aren’t always tech-savvy and this might lead to some mistakes when it comes to setting up tracking code. Some of these mistakes include:
- The right code placed on an incorrect page
- Incorrect code placed on the right page
- Extra script added by an app or CMS which then renders the entire tracking code useless.
Some of these can be sorted if digital marketers collaborate with technical experts during the marketing campaign.
Common mistakes made when tracking conversions
These are often strategist mistakes made by the marketer. These include:
- Counting duplicate conversions. Ideally, each click identity should count as one conversion but sometimes marketers count multiple purchases from a single click ID as different conversions- a costly mistake to make.
- Assigning improper conversion values. You need to know and assign proper monetary values to different conversions. For instance, a person who adds stuff to their cart but abandons them isn’t the same as a customer who makes an actual purchase. The purchase conversion is of more value.
- Keeping track of non-monetary conversions. Non-monetary conversions are those which don’t add revenue directly to the client. This could be something like subscribing to a newsletter or downloading an E-book your client is offering. While it is good to keep count of these, assigning a conversion value to them isn’t necessary, unless it was the goal of your campaign e.g. if your aim was to increase newsletter subscribers then you can give that a conversion value.
Don’t hesitate to contact me today if you need assistance with your digital marketing campaign.