The words “analytics” and “data” often cause people’s eyes to glaze over in confusion. Too many believe that only math gerus understand data. The reality is that analytics is simply the act of putting meaning behind the numbers. The number 100 means nothing without definition and context. That is where the real act of analytics becomes essential in growing and managing your business.

If you have a website, then you should be using Google Analytics to see how users are behaving when they visit. Google Analytics has a free and paid version, both of which offer valuable insight that can help you provide information that your current and potential customers are interested in and are searching. Beyond having access to data like session visits, bounce rate, and which pages people are visiting, Google Analytics can also provide you excellent data on conversions. If you are unsure how to track your conversion data in Google Analytics, this guide is for you.

GA Conversion Tracking

Step 1: Set up Google Analytics

If you do not have a Google Analytics account, then you must first set this up. It is simple and easy and can be accomplished in just a few minutes with minimal effort. If you already have a Google account like a Gmail email address or YouTube account, then you will find it easiest to establish your Google Analytics account under this same account. If you do not have a Google account, follow these steps to create one.

1. Visit Google.com and in the upper right corner, select Account.
2. Choose Create an Account and then select your account type, for myself or to manage a business. You’ll want to select to manage a business due to the features you will have access to for business personalization and business visibility. You do not need to use a Gmail account for your Google account. If you want to use a business email or other email address, Google allows this.
3. Google will ask for some personal information and allow you to choose a username and password. It is optional to provide a phone number for future ease in accessing your account should you forget your password.
4. Confirm your information and you are set with your Google account.

Now that you have your Google account, it is time to set up your Google Analytics account and get your Google Analytics conversion tracking code.

1. When you are signed into your Google account, select Analytics from the dropdown menu in the upper right corner. 
2. Click the Sign up button on the right side of the screen.
3. On the next page, select Website and provide the necessary information regarding your website URL, industry, and time zone.
4. It is best to check the boxes next to all of the recommended options so you are maintaining the best practices of Google Analytics and getting the most from the platform.
5. Click the button that says Get Tracking ID (image below) and accept the Terms of Service.

(Image Credit: MailOptin)

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Your Google Analytics account is now set up, but you are not finished. You must complete some very important steps to apply your analytics conversion tracking code to collect information and data that will feed into your Google Analytics account.

1. You will need to access your Tracking ID and tracking code snippet. To do this, go to Admin > Property > Tracking Info. It is at this point when many people get that “deer in the headlights” look and are frightened by the code snippet. Do not worry. Take a deep breath and move forward.
2. If you are using a WordPress site, it is easiest to activate Google Analytics through the MonsterInsights plugin, which also is free unless you choose to upgrade to the paid version. 
3. To use the free version, go to Plugins from your WordPress menu and choose Add New. Search for MonsterInsights and click Install and then Activate. 
4. Next, go to Insights > Settings and select Authenticate with your Google account. 
5. Choose your Google account and then allow MonsterInsights to manage and publish your Google Tag Manager content/folder.
6. After you have selected the correct website profile, click Complete Authentication.

(Image Credit: MonsterInsights)

You also can add Google Analytics code without the use of plugins. You can add the code to the header.php file in your WordPress theme or if you know PHP, you can open your theme’s functions.php file and add the code snippet between the following code:

<?php add_action (‘wp_footer’, ‘add_googleanalytics’); function add_googleanalytics() { ?>

Add Google Analytics code snippet here.

<?php } ?>

You now have three options for adding the Google Analytics code to your website. If you do not have a WordPress site or if you are still feeling uneasy about this step, it may be advisable to have a developer add your Google Analytics code snippet to your website.

Step 2. Identify your website goals.

Before you proceed to conversion goal set-up, you need to identify your goals and key performance indicators (KPIs). This is done through a measurement plan, which simply states what your goals and KPIs are and how you are evaluating success. For example, let’s say that your goal is to increase newsletter subscribers so you can connect with your website visitors more often. Your goal is “Increase newsletter subscribers.” Your KPI to measure your progress toward accomplishing this goal is Form completions where website visitors will provide their email address. Once you identify your KPIs, you can then move to conversion goal set-up.

Step 3. Set up conversion goals

If you stop at the basic out-of-the-box Google Analytics, you will gather important information on sessions, how much time people are spending online, and what pages they are visiting. What you will not know is if they completed forms or made purchases. If you are running paid search, you will not know if your campaigns generated website traffic or engagement.

You should begin by creating goals for Google conversion analytics. This is the point at which you want to refer to your measurement plan so you are setting up goals that align with how you are measuring success of your website. Let’s use the example from above for newsletter subscribers.

From the Admin page, go to the View page and select Goals. Click the New Goal button. Select Custom under Goal setup. Now you need to enter the goal description and choose a name for your goal so you understand what it means when you look at your data. Next, choose Destination as the goal type and click Continue. For example:

(Image Credit: Search Engine Journal)

When a person provides an email address to opt-in for your newsletter, a thank you page should appear. This is a destination page on your website that the user has reached. So, in the destination field on your goal, enter the URL for the thank you page. The Value field is optional, but if you know the lifetime value of a person who opts-in for your newsletter, you can enter a value. Otherwise, simply leave this field blank. Be sure to click the Save button.

The Funnel option is for instances where a conversion occurs along a path such as the user first reaching Page A, then completing Event Action A. For this particular example of a newsletter opt-in, we will skip the Funnel option. On your goals page, you will see your list of goals. If they are supposed to be active, the On button should be highlighted under Recording. You can turn off goals any time you wish if your measurement plan changes in the future. For instance:

(Image Credit: Bounteous)

Step 4: Monitor Your Goal Data

To look at your Google conversion analytics, you will want to look at the Acquisition metrics in Google Analytics. For Google Analytics how to track conversions, go to Acquisition > Overview and choose the newsletter subscription goal that you just set up in the Conversion dropdown menu. The screen will provide the data on sessions and goal conversions. You will see which channels are driving the highest volume of visits as well as the highest conversion rate. If you provided a value for your goal, you also will see what your conversion has been worth and which channels contributed the most value. Here is an example of what your conversion overview should look like:

(Image Credit: Hotjar)

Adwords Analytics Conversion Tracking

Google Ads, formerly AdWords, has a great feature that allows your paid search campaigns to be automatically optimized for goal conversion. This is an efficient way to get the most out of your paid search campaign budget while reducing the amount of time needed to monitor it. To link your Google Ads account to your Google Analytics account for Adwords analytics conversion tracking, take the following steps:

1. First, go to the Admin section of your Google Analytics account.
2. Go to the Linked accounts section and make sure Google Ads is selected.
3. Login to your Google Ads account to complete the process. Click the tools icon in the upper right corner.
4. Select Linked Accounts under Setup.
5. Click Details under Google Analytics. You will see the Google Analytics properties that you have access to. Click Link next to the Google Analytics account that corresponds with your reporting suite.
6. Be sure to click Save.

Custom Event Tagging

You likely will want to look at implementing custom event tagging to see data on things like PDF downloads, video views, online tool use, and form submissions. This tagging can be hard coded, but it is best to use Google Tag Manager (GTM) for this work. GTM allows you to update event tagging without code pushes or multiple tracking calls that can slow a website down and negatively impact SEO.

When custom event tagging is implemented, you will identify a Category, Action, and Label. For example, let’s look at newsletter opt-ins. Perhaps this is a form on your website, but you may also have a Contact Us form that is used to request more information. Your custom event tagging would look something like the following:

Category = Forms

Action = Form Submission

Label = Newsletter

For the Contact Us form, you would change your Label to Contact Us.

The use of custom event tagging allows you to more thoroughly tag your website to see how users are behaving on your site and to gather important information around conversion activity. When we discussed goal conversions above, the use of funnel identification is where custom event tagging would also come into play.

Urchin Tracking Modules (UTM) parameters

We’ve covered how to set up Google Analytics on your website and create conversion goals. Let’s talk about the importance of UTM parameters as part of Google Analytics and how to track conversions. UTM parameters allow Google Analytics to attribute website visitors and their actions, including conversions, to a traffic source. Without the use of UTM parameters it can be impossible to attribute a traffic source to marketing efforts, and thus know the return on ad spend (ROAS).

Google Analytics recognizes traffic using specific logic involving the HTTP referrer and the UTM parameters. HTTP Referrer means a user clicked on a link on another website and was directed to your website. This may be a link from websites like a Search Engine Results Page (SERP) from a search engine, a blog, or a social media page.

UTM parameters are appended text at the end of a URL that identify the source, medium, campaign, term, and content of marketing campaigns. They are appended in the following manner: https://www.website.com/?utm_source=XXX&utm_medium=XXX&utm_campaign=XXX&utm_term=xxx&utm_content=XXX. The source and medium are required for Google Analytics to categorize the traffic. By including all of these parameters, you will be able to identify information like the channel the user came from, the campaign that drove the user, important information like A/B testing or specific calls to action that prompted the user to click a link.

Below is the logic used by Google Analytics to categorize traffic according to the information identified in the medium:

• utm_medium=email: identifies traffic from email
• utm_medium=affiliate: identifies affiliate marketing
• utm_medium=social: identifies social media platforms
• utm_medium=display and utm_medium=cpm: identifies banner and display advertising
• utm_medium=cpc, utm_medium=ppc, and utm_medium=paidsearch: identifies paid search campaign

There are times when a source can fall into more than one medium, which is why Google Analytics uses both the medium and source to categorize traffic. For example, traffic from Google can be from paid search, organic search, display, or referral. Google Analytics will see the visit came from Google and will then look for utm_medium to further identify the attribution. This is where it is important to have that piece of the UTM parameter or your paid campaigns will be categorized as organic search and you will not know your ROAS. Additionally, by implementing Google Analytics Adwords tracking, you can easily see attribution in your Ads account.

We hope that you found this article useful.

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Social is another channel that can have paid and organic traffic. If you have purchased advertising on Facebook, you will want to make sure to use a UTM parameter that distinguishes this advertising from a post that you have made on your Facebook page or both will come through the reporting in the same manner as simply social traffic. In the absence of both a referrer and a UTM parameter, Google Analytics will categorize the traffic as “Direct,” which typically means the user typed in the URL or clicked on a bookmark or Google Analytics simply does not know where the user came from. The image below shows traffic tracking with an emphasis on Direct and Social traffic:

There are some rules around UTM parameters:

• Google Analytics is case-sensitive. It is a best practice to use lower case. If you use email, Email, eMail, or EMAIL for the links in an email campaign, you will see each of these categorized as different channels in Google Analytics unless you adjust the default rules in the platform.
• Do not include spaces or your URL will break and you will lose everything in your UTM parameter after the space. Always use an underscore instead of a space.
• Do not use punctuation or special characters as they also will break the URL.
• Never reuse the same UTM parameter sequence or you will be unable to distinguish one initiative from another.

Google Analytics allows you to create custom traffic channels to more thoroughly categorize your users and attribute conversions. You may want to create custom channels to identify efforts like online newsletters, QR codes, or to more clearly categorize sponsored social from organic social traffic. Through consistent use of UTM parameters, you will be able to clearly see how your marketing efforts are paying off in driving traffic to your site as well as engagement with KPIs and conversion goals.

Diib®: Analyze Your GA Conversion Tracking Today!

Google Analytics is a powerful tool in helping you see and understand where your marketing dollars are getting the greatest return on investment. While the out-of-the-box Google Analytics implementation provides valuable information, it is limited when it comes to attributing goal conversions. This is why you will want to make sure to use custom event tagging, UTM parameters, and Google Analytics Adwords tracking for more detailed reporting.

Diib Digital also offers the most up-to-date metrics on your Google Analytics campaigns available. This gives you the unique ability to tweak your settings to make the most of your resources. Here are some of the features we know you’ll love:

• Google Analytics Integration and Conversion Insights
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• Social media integration and performance
• Broken pages where you have backlinks (404 checker)
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