In the internet advertising business, people live and breathe to their website conversions. So for those of us that are not as tech savvy as the rest of the world, let’s start off by asking the basic question: what is a website conversion? A website conversion is anything that the host of the site believes to be valuable information for their business such as a lead or a sale. Common examples of pages tagged as conversions are “thank you” and “confirmation” pages. Website conversions give you the ability to see how successful your online marketing efforts are in generating business. There are two major aspects of conversion tracking that come into play:
- Online conversion tracking- The basic premise of online conversion tracking is that it allows you to see where your online traffic is coming from, the pages they are visiting and the percentage who actually perform an action while on the site. Programs such as Google Analytics provide information that can come in very handy to those in charge of online marketing for businesses. Tracking the keywords users type to get to the site as well as knowing what referring sites they came from can mean worlds to help understanding the effectiveness of a paid advertising campaign. The ability to see which web pages are converting the best also helps you determine your ROI.
- Offline conversion tracking- Offline conversion tracking is equally important if not more than online conversion tracking. It is an underutilized but extremely powerful tool for understanding advertising ROI. With so many people using mobile smart phones and having the ability to call a site’s number literally at their fingertips, it’s valuable conversion data that can’t be looked past. Many conversion tracking programs lack the ability to trace a phone call back to a particular web page, which can leave businesses scratching their heads and guessing at the true return they’re getting on their advertising dollar.
Century Interactive implements both online and offline conversion tracking so businesses don’t just get half the picture when it comes to their advertising dollar but the full picture with all the necessary details. A 2006 comScore survey showed that 63% of purchases by consumers who conducted online searches were made offline. The numbers speak for themselves and show that purely relying on online conversion tracking will not give you an accurate account of your advertising returns.
So next time you’re considering where you’re going to invest your advertising and website dollars, also consider whether you’d want to know if those investments were paying off and not just going down the drain. To get the full benefit of tracking your website and ads you can’t just go for the extra point, you have to go for the two point conversion!
Tags: ad effectiveness, advertising, call tracking, Century Interactive, lead optimization, offline conversions, seo, website tracking