Conversion tracking shows which user actions have value for the business and which channels lead to them. Without it, an advertising platform can see traffic but has limited understanding of what should count as success.
What is a conversion?
A conversion is a target action: a purchase, form submission, phone call, appointment, booking or another event connected to a business goal.
Primary and secondary conversions
Primary
Primary conversions are used for core performance measurement and, in advertising platforms, can be used for bid optimisation.
Secondary
Secondary events help analyse behaviour but should not be mixed with the main business outcomes.
What should e-commerce track?
Purchase, order value, currency and a unique transaction ID. Add to cart and checkout start are also useful supporting events.
What should service businesses track?
Form submissions, confirmed calls, appointments or another real contact. A simple button click is not always the same as a completed enquiry.
Common mistakes
Duplicate purchase events, firing an event before successful form submission, incorrect order values and mixing micro-conversions with sales distort the data.
Testing tracking
After setup, go through the user journey yourself and verify that the event fires once and sends the correct parameters.
Why algorithms need it
Automated strategies learn from the signals they receive. The more accurately a business defines a valuable action, the more useful the data becomes for optimisation.