What is Conversion?

The tracking of successful completion of any action on a website by the user, like purchase, sign-up, or any action which is considered as a final goal for the client.

Definition of a Conversion:

A conversion is an action that a person takes on the website such as clicking on a particular button, filling a form, adding an item to the shopping cart or viewing a particular page. These actions are defined by the advertiser as the campaign goals. Conversion tracking code often referred as conversion pixel can be placed on any page of the website.

E.g.:  We are running a Printer campaign and on the Landing Page there is a SHOP NOW button that takes us directly to the shopping page. So, in this particular case the number of people that landed on the shopping page are our conversions.

Purpose:

The purpose of conversion tracking is know the success rate of your campaign or say product. It can be used to track number of actions like:

• Purchase
• Sign-ups
• Submission of E-mail addresses
• Goal Page
• Any event which can help to know the success of the campaign can be tracked.

What is Conversion Pixel?

A conversion pixel is generally a 1×1 image fired through a short line of code which is placed on your confirmation page or thank you page. It fires whenever any user reaches to the confirmation page which helps in capturing data of number of converted users.

Who are Converted users?

Users that has crossed the confirmation page are the converted users and the ones who reached to the website but didn’t purchase or did any successful completion of conversion event they fall into imprinted pool and are called imprint users or also non-converted users.

Example:

<img src = “http://www.knowonlineadvertising.com/conversion/ab1323cd234h531Z”  width = 1 height = 1 border = 0>

*It is not a general syntax but one of the form of conversion code.

What is Conversion rate?

1. Conversion rate is the one which tells about the conversion success of the campaign. It is the number of conversion divided by number of impressions served. Higher is the conversion rate higher is the success of campaign.
2. Formula of conversion rate is: number of conversions/number of Impression X 100

How Conversions Help?

Conversions are a measuring tool to judge the campaigns Performance. Following are the measured parameters:

3. ROI: It helps in calculating the Return of Investment for the campaign. e.g.: If the pixel is placed on the THANK YOU page, we can calculate the total revenue from the number of conversions and the product amount. This revenue is the ROI for the amount that was spent.
4. Keywords / Creatives: Helps in tracking the best performing Ad/ keywords by measuring the number of actions on all the creative concepts. e.g.: When we are running 3 different creatives for a real estate campaign, but the one with the red bungalow gives maximum conversion, so we can use that creative for future campaigns.
5. Devices: Best performing platform/ device can be figured out by the actions done on each device. e.g.: While promoting a college max number of form submissions were done from desktop and very few from mobile.

Short and Simplified WORKING:

The simple working of conversion tracking starts when the user clicks on an ad or a banner, clicking on the ad fires a cookie on the user’s browser which keeps the record of the time, site, banners , placement, etc.(information that can be required to capture the conversion). These records help in tracking the conversion if the user is not converted at the same time but gets converted next time when it comes directly to the website, this conversion recorded goes to the agency/ network who gave the ad impression.

How does conversion tracking work? (STEP WISE)

Assuming you, the advertiser, has placed our conversion tracking code at the end of the ordering process (for example: “Thank You” page), the process will follow these steps:

1. View Ad

A visitor views the ad on 1^st January; the ad server simply records an impression on January 1^st.

2. Click on Ad

A visitor clicks on the ad and begins browsing the advertiser’s store on January 1st. The ad server records a click on January 1st and a cookie is created to track conversions and it could last up to 30 days (default) after the click.

3. Purchase

This visitor eventually makes a purchase on January 1st and gets to the “Thank You” page that contains the conversion tracking code. The ad server records this conversion and awards it to the original click. A zone is also credited if the clicked ad was served via that zone.

4. View-Through Conversion

If a purchase was made but there was no recorded click, our ad server would record it as a view-through conversion.

How to track conversion? 

A JavaScript code has to be placed on the website. This code places an invisible 1×1 pixel image on the website, this pixel sends a message to the tool that the conversion (clicking, visiting, registration etc.) is been done. This… continue reading