For many of the digital marketing projects we undertake, it’s often surprising that there is no tracking set up to measure conversions or the tracking is not 100% adequate.

Including Relevant Goals in your Web Analytics

Google Analytics is usually the web analytics software of choice for many startups and small businesses and if this is the case then you should make sure you have relevant goals set up from day 1 of your website being live.

Key goals we recommend tracking on your website (if the feature is present) are:

Contact form enquiry completions
Clicks via a call button on phone number link
Clicks on a live chat or instant messaging feature
Completion of a newsletter list addition form
Completion for a form to download specific content such as a pdf file
Measuring specific events such as video views on your website

Setting Up eCommerce Tracking (if required)

If you have an eCommerce website then setting up your web analytics to track transactions and revenue is vital.

Most eCommerce platforms will have documentation to help you set up eCommerce tracking for Google Analytics. Some platforms also have free and paid add-ons that can be used to help you configure eCommerce tracking in Google Analytics. So, whichever eCommerce platform your website uses, make sure you search for any potential documentation and extensions to help configuration easier.

Having ROI Reporting & Measurement Processes

With the correct tracking in place, it’s important to have a reporting mechanism in place to measure ROI effectively. Many businesses often just focus on how much traffic is coming to the website or just how many conversions they are getting via their website on a monthly basis. Ensuring you list your marketing costs against either revenue generated or estimated value per enquiry is important.

An ROI reporting process can be very simple and be mapped out on a spreadsheet. One way to set up this kind of process is to combine your ROI related data such as campaign spend on a Google Sheet with conversion data tracked in Google Analytics and combine them via a Google Data Studio report.

Google Data Studio Resource for Connecting Google Sheets

Google Data Studio Resource for Connecting Google Analytics

Google Data Studio has a number of templates that makes it easy to set up dashboards containing links to certain data sources.

Analytics Considerations for China Marketing Strategies

If you are running marketing campaigns in China then you may also consider implementing Baidu Analytics in order to track visitors and user engagement more accurately coming from China and through specific marketing channels in China.

The Baidu Analytics platform is currently only available in Simplified Chinese, which can make it harder to configure and also use the reports to analyse if you do not read Chinese.

Dashboard Reporting

Setting up dashboard reporting can help to provide summary performance data for people at the C-Level in your business and also reduce the need for more manual time consuming reporting.

Google Data Studio

Google Data Studio provides a free way to set up dashboards that enables you to integrate data from Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Google Ads and Google Sheets, however other paid third-party connectors are required if you wish to feed in data from other marketing channels such as Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.

Databox

Another low-cost alternative to Google Data Studio that allows you to feed data in from non-Google marketing platforms is Databox. This enables you to create up to 3 dashboards linked to 3 different data sources for free, so you can create dashboards that provide insights from platforms such as Facebook Ads and Linkedin Ads, as well as many other marketing platforms and tools.

Integrating Marketing Campaigns in a CRM System

If your business model involves driving enquiries through your website then it’s important to not only measure the amount of enquiries driven but also measuring the quality of the enquiries coming through the website. This can be done by ensuring the enquiry data is tracked from a marketing source into a CRM system where each lead can be tracked through the sales pipeline.

Many CRM systems allow you to integrate campaigns from marketing platforms such as Google Ads, Facebook Ads and LinkedIn Ads in order for you to analyse the quality of lead coming from each marketing platform you allocate budget to. So when researching and selecting a CRM system to use as part of your inbound marketing strategy, make sure you identify what marketing platforms can be integrated into the CRM system easily.

Analysing Usability Shouldn’t be Overlooked

Driving as much traffic as possible should not be your main objective. Driving the most relevant traffic, which converts at the best rate possible should be the key focus.

There are some easy options to help you analyse usability and also help increase the conversion rate on your website. HotJar is one software solution that is easy to set up on your website which helps you to analyse user behaviour by viewing user videos and also review heatmaps of certain landing pages on your website. This can be done for free or relatively low cost depending on the size of the visitor sample you wish to analyse and how many pages you want to review heatmaps for.

Google Optimize is also another tool to consider using, particularly if you are running paid marketing campaigns and able to drive a level of traffic that can provide statistically significant data. This tool is free and can help you A/B test landing pages or make small adjustments to your landing pages via multivariate testing.

These tools can help you to increase the conversion rates of your already existing levels of traffic, which may be easier to do than driving more visitors to your website.

We have included more insights on what usability tools can help optimise conversion rate in chapter 6 of this guide.