Conversion Attribution: Give Credit Where It's Due

In the Digital Analytics space, we are all obsessed with identifying marketing tactics that perform the best and drive the most return-on-investment via conversions. We seek to track all sorts of checkout funnels, application submissions, and newsletter sign-ups and do our best to identify what search phrases and traffic sources ultimately led visitors to those actions. But one of the most common mistakes of many analysts and marketers is to only pay exclusive attention to the assets that led to a conversion in a single session. Many people fail to realize that the conversion process can often span several sessions before a valuable action is taken.

That's why it is important to consider conversion attribution: Did converting visitors visit the website prior to making the purchase or submitting an online application? If so, how did they initially find your website? There are countless gems that can be found in looking at these factors.

Be sure to check out DaBrian Marketing Group's latest YouTube video where Web Analyst Brandon Wensing discusses the importance of Conversion Attribution:

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The Value of PPC: Where is ROI?

All too often PPC reports focus on performance metrics such as:

- Impressions
- Clicks
- Click through Rate (CTR)

Although these metrics are important, where is the value in them? If anything a report showing these items is only showing cost (CPC or CPM) but fails to show any type of value added. This isnt just a PPC problem, but a marketing problem. It is important to not just report on Cost, but to show Value too.

This is why Conversion tracking through analytics is crucial for PPC Campaigns. Once the tracking codes are are in place and working properly, assign a value to each Conversion. Now you can see not only the Cost (CPC or CPM) but also the Value coming from your PPC Campaigns, Ad Groups, Ad Copy, and Keywords. This will greatly help you optimize your Campaigns and reveal where to allocate your budget to increase and maximize your ROI.

If you have any comments or questions about setting up Conversion Tracking through Google AdWords, Microsoft adCenter, or an analytics platform, let us know in the comments below.

3 Tips to Track Conversions More Effectively

As analysts, we are taught and bred to have an insatiable desire to track as many aspects of our websites and marketing strategies as possible. We often go out of our way to tag everything with codes and scripts so we can sniff out trends and insights. This hard work usually pays off in the form of content performance and traffic source reports.

More often than not, we like to pay close attention to the conversion report. How many newsletter subscribers did we get last quarter? Did online sales increase or decrease from last year? How many visitors from my target market downloaded an application? Conversion tracking is clearly an important element of marketing as a whole, but how do you do it effectively? Here are 3 tips to help you get the most out of your Google Analytics conversion reports:

1. Assign a Conversion Value: Conversions are usually actions visitors can take that result in some sort of revenue, be it directly or indirectly. Whether the conversion is for a completed transaction or for downloading more information, an average value should be assigned. This is paramount to demonstrating ROI for any digital marketing initiative.


2. Identify & Use Funnels: It’s great to know how many online sales transactions there were or how many new member registrations took place over the past month, but there is a great deal more that can be studied about these conversions. Conversions like these often feature several steps (a checkout process for instance: Add to Cart, Checkout, Billing Information, etc.). Specifying a conversion funnel within Google Analytics for these processes can shine a great deal of light on problem areas where visitors and leads are dropping off and leaving the conversion process.


3. Pay Attention to 2nd and 3rd Degree Touch Points: The conversion process can often pan out beyond just the first visit. In the case of an online purchase, the sales process usually spans across several sessions, as the modern consumer researches your product or service, looks for reviews, and reassurance that this will be a wise purchase. With that being said, do not ignore the first touch point that the converting visitor made with the website! If they initially discovered your site via your company’s Facebook page but completed the sale after returning to the site directly three sessions later, your social media efforts might be paying off more than you think. In the case of paid campaigns on Google AdWords or Microsoft adCenter, the destination URLs can be tagged with “utm_nooverride=1” to ensure the first touch point gets credit for the conversion. A nice, quick explanation of how the nooverride tag works can be found here. The latest version of Google Analytics also makes analysis of multiple conversion touch points easier with its new Multi-Channel Funnel reports.

Knowing how many conversions were triggered on your website is one thing. Having a deep understanding of how much revenue was generated from those conversions, where improvements can be made in the conversion process, and which of your marketing campaigns helped drive them can save your company time and money. Most of all, however, it can help you market more effectively and efficiently to ultimately increase conversions and ROI.

Web Analytics: Usage Analysis Leads to Improved Customer Relations

Knowing how your target audience uses your website is integral to increasing visitor conversions and improving customer relations. Various retail stores around the world spend millions of dollars on researching how their customers browse their brick and mortar stores. They use this data to arrange the store in the most efficient manner, even engaging in testing to increase purchases by the customer.

Your internet marketing campaign should adopt a similar approach. Focusing on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) within your web analytics solution can provide insights into how your target audience is using the website. The KPIs can bring troublesome drop-off points within your goal conversion funnels to your attention so you can make the required changes to the design of the page or its content to increase conversions. Perhaps certain landing pages have a consistently high bounce rate. Or perhaps the pageviews-per-visit or average time on site are down. This could indicate that the content on the page is not relevant or targeted enough for the consumer.

Customer relations are not only managed in brick and mortar stores, over the phone, or in emails. Implementing web analytics into your internet marketing approach can provide an integral avenue of improvement to customer relations and conversion rate.