Conversions, conversions, conversions. We all want them, whether the action you deem valuable is a click, a view or a purchase. Here, you can find out why tracking conversions on your website is a good idea and how it can help you to reach your business goals. If you’re wondering how to evaluate performance by analysing Google Ads data, conversion tracking is a good starting point.

1. What are conversions?

2. Why should I track them?

3. What can I track with conversion tracking?

The official definition of a conversion is:

• An action that's counted when someone interacts with your ad (for example, clicks a text ad or views a video ad) and then takes an action that you’ve defined as valuable to your business

Examples of valuable activity include website purchases, phone calls, app downloads or newsletter sign-ups. The set-up process is different depending on the type of conversion that you’re tracking, so the first step in setting up conversion tracking is to choose a conversion source, or where your conversions come from.

There are countless reasons why you should track your conversions, but we’ll focus on three main ones. Firstly, you can measure your advertising success. You can see what your return on investment (ROI) is, and make better informed decisions about your ad spend - making sure not a penny is wasted.

Secondly, you can improve your Google Ads campaigns. This means that, whether you’re measuring clicks on a website, downloads on an app or calls to a store, you can see which keywords, ads, ad groups and campaigns are best at driving valuable customer activity. You can then nurture these to make them even more successful, while also improving any keywords, ads or campaigns that aren’t performing as well.

Thirdly, you can track your conversions to get even more conversions. Tracking conversions allows you to use Smart Bidding strategies (such as target CPA, enhanced CPC and target ROAS) that automatically optimise your campaigns according to your business goals. Optimised ads = more customer activity = more conversions.

Different ad types will influence the conversions you want your potential customers to complete. For example, website conversions are different than phone call conversions. Here’s how they differ:

• Websites: This is for anyone who wants to track when a customer completes an action on their website. This could be, for example, making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, clicking on a button or any other valuable action a customer can take on your website. Find out exactly how to set up conversion tracking for your website.
• App: This action is for companies who want to track when a customer installs their app or completes an in-app action, such as a purchase. Find out more about setting up mobile app conversion tracking.
• Phones: If you want to track calls from ads, calls to a phone number on your website or phone number clicks on a mobile website, phone conversions are what you need. Find out more about tracking phone conversions.
• Offline Conversion Tracking: This is useful for anyone whose ad doesn’t lead directly to an online sale, but instead starts a customer down a path that ultimately leads to a sale in the offline world, such as at your office or over the phone. By importing offline conversions, you can measure what happens in the offline world after your ad results in a click or call to your business. Find out everything you need to know about offline conversion tracking.

If you want to track multiple conversions from this list, just set up a different conversion action for each type of conversion that you want to track. For example, you can set up one conversion action to track purchases on your website, and another to track calls from your ads.

And that’s an overview of why tracking conversions is essential for you to monitor and understand the performance of your campaigns. Remember, Google Ads isn’t just creating a good ad or campaign - it’s keeping tabs on the activity too.