Meredith's husband 0:33

You remember , a couple of weeks ago , we were talking about conversion rates . Yes , and how . Making an improvement to your conversion rate the percentage of people who are coming to your website , who actually contact you that's your conversion rate . Yeah , trying to make some improvements there is good because it not only has an immediate impact , but it also will impact any future traffic you get . So then if you go out and do work to actually get more visitors

The Double Impact of Improving Conversion Rate

Meredith's husband 0:57

to your website , it's going to have an impact on those too , and I was saying how important it was , yeah , yeah . So one of my students asked well , that's great . How do we measure our conversion rates ? I want to know what my conversion rate is . Yeah , say it right . No , it's Google Analytics , google Analytics .

Meredith's husband 1:12

And the reason I didn't talk about it then during that episode is that it's kind of become almost an advanced topic , because you remember when google analytics was re-released no , I think about a year ago I talked , we talked about this , okay , and how annoying it was , and how , who it was . How annoying it was , oh , probably . Yeah , google came out with what they call g4 and and I spent probably more than 10 hours just trying to figure out how to set up conversion , how to measure conversions in Google Analytics and I kind of know what I'm doing . I'm not like a total newbie so it was quite annoying that I couldn't and this is like I said in the episode a couple of weeks ago this is like the holy grail of metrics . It is the most important metric , and when Google re-updated or re-released Google Analytics , it made it really hard to just track your conversions . I don't know , but myself and all my colleagues , everybody I know in my industry , we're all and still kind of are just beside ourselves

G4 and The Holy Grail of Website Metrics

Meredith's husband 2:13

wondering what the hell was Google thinking ? Yeah , what's it thinking ? Google ? Anyway , I really don't like Google Analytics anymore . I use Google Search Console much more . However , tracking your conversions , you have to use Google Analytics , and that's the one thing that I would say Google Analytics is still good for is measuring your conversions .

Meredith's husband 2:34

Okay , now how ? Yeah , that's the thing , yeah , so when Google came out and they re-released analytics , I spent a lot of time , like I said , trying to figure out how to measure conversions . I did it . I wrote a blog about it . They then changed the method and they did make it a little bit easier , but then . But then the blog that I wrote in the video tutorial I made were no longer valid , so

The New G4 Analytics and Tracking Conversions

Meredith's husband 2:59

I learned again how to do it the new way . Again , I re-released my own video .

Meredith's husband 3:05

Yes , again , they changed the method . They just try to keep you on your toes . They want to make sure you know . So what I'm going to do now , instead of trying to explain it just in case they change it again , I'm just going to link to the blog that they have now and , oddly enough , they never even had on their blog how to set it up . Are you serious ? Yeah , yeah , that's why it was so hard . I could not . I scoured YouTube like dozens of videos looking for tutorials myself Couldn't find one . They have one now . That is pretty good , and if they change the method again of how you measure conversions , they will keep this blog updated and I won't have to re-release this podcast . So I'm not going to say exactly what buttons to push , but I'll link to the blog where you can go to figure it out .

Meredith's husband 3:54

And so that's why I didn't mention or that's one of the reasons I didn't mention in the last episode about how you do it , because you can still do the work to improve your conversion rate without actually knowing exactly what your conversion rate is . Does that make sense ? But how do we ? Yes , well , I talked about how talked . Yeah , yeah , I talked about how to improve it . Oh , okay , that was the . That was , yeah , that was the entire point of the episode Excellent . But you can't . You can make those changes and not necessarily have to know , like , exactly what your.5% . I'm trying to get to 0.6 . You can just try to make those same improvements and then assume that it's going to improve your conversion rate , because going ahead and tracking and measuring your conversion rate is kind of an advanced topic now , like it's not that easy , okay , and when you say advanced , how would you differentiate what is advanced and what is not advanced ?

Meredith's husband 4:48

Well , like I said , it took me about probably a dozen hours to figure out how to do it , and I'm not , you know , you're not fresh off the bus . I would like to think I kind of know my way around this stuff . Yeah , and it took , it took , it was and it was extremely frustrating . So , if you're , if you're , if you're just starting , oh wow , it's going to be overwhelming . And also , if you are beginning your SEO , if you don't have a lot of traffic yet and you're not getting a lot of conversions . It's not going to be very useful to try to track that number . Okay , because the number is going to be so small that it's going to fluctuate . It really only gets to be useful when you have , I would say , at least several hundred visitors and half a dozen conversions per month , every month at the lowest . It really , if you're at that point , it's not going to help that much to know this number . But if you want to figure out what your conversion rate is and I don't blame you if you do , I would I'd want to know You're going to need Google Analytics installed .

Meredith's husband 5:50

You're going to need to set up what they call an event and then you're going to need to mark that event as being a conversion so that Google knows when that event happens . I know I'll back up . Okay , good , when that event happens

How to Track Conversions

Meredith's husband 6:05

, it is a conversion . Now , what that event is is when somebody hits your confirmation page . Remember what your confirmation page is . Confirmation page is the last step that they take and the first step to them becoming . No , that's not right . Your confirmation page is your thank you page . It's what people hit after your content . You need to have that . So you're going to need those two things . You're Google Analytics , you need to have a confirmation page .

Meredith's husband 6:33

And also , I guess the third reason I didn't bring this up is a lot of CRMs like if you have Dubsado or 17 Hats or any of these others , they may just display a thank you message . Like if I fill out if I , as a user on your website , if I fill out the contact form , it may just pop up a message and say like hey , thanks for doing this , we'll get back to you , right

Tracking Conversions with CRMs

Meredith's husband 6:57

? Instead of that , you need to send people to this confirmation page . Some CRMs don't have that option I think most do , but not always . So how do you check ? You're just going to have to check with their .

Meredith's husband 7:10

You probably , if you're using Dubsado , I would say I would go to Google and I would say Dubsado , google Analytics , measure conversions , something like that . Hopefully they'll have a blog . If it's not obvious with a search like that , then I would contact their support . Okay , and just say hey , I want to establish conversion tracking in Google Analytics . I want to measure my conversions . This is not an abnormal request . They should be able to help you with this .

Meredith's husband 7:39

If they say anything like oh , you don't need to , we can do that for you , or you can . Just we can't not take it , gary , because things like Squarespace . If you go to Squarespace and say things like this , I know that their support will come back and say , well , we have our own analytics . You go to Squarespace and say things like this , I know that their support will come back and say , well , we have our own analytics , you don't need to use Google Analytics . So if support for whatever platform comes back and says something like that , just say no , I just want to set up Google Analytics . Can you tell me how ?

Meredith's husband 8:04

And if they say , well , it's just not possible , then well then it's not possible , but there really should be a way , because this is for any legitimate business running a website measuring conversions is , yeah , very crucial . Yeah , it's something you got to do , unless you're really just beginning , like I said . So that's it , oh yeah , okay , I wanted to keep that short . I want to tell you how to set it up , but also say , if you can't do it , it's not the end of the world , it is a little bit advanced . If your business grows , you'll come up with some sort of method to track this . Excellent .

Meredith's husband 8:39

So if your business is booming , then you need to contact your CRMs . I would say you need probably contact your CRM anyway . It would be nice for Google Analytics to at least be collecting this information as soon as you can , so that down the line , because if you set up conversion tracking now , it's not going to track conversions from yesterday or the day before or two months ago . So you would like to have it at least collecting the information . So by the time you are ready to go and look at it , it's been collecting the information . So I would go

Do this sooner, rather than later...

Meredith's husband 9:11

to your CRM and say how can I forward users to a confirmation page after the form submission ? And you can do that .

Meredith's husband 9:20

Do that search in Google , because there's probably they're going to . If it's possible , they will have it in a blog somewhere . They'll have that question answered . A lot of times it's just a checkbox and then you just enter the URL of whatever you , of wherever you want people to go after they submit your form . Okay , and you want them to go to a thank you page ? You want them to go to the confirmation page , the thank you page that you set up on wherever you are Squarespace , wordpress , et cetera . Freaks , yeah , okay , that makes sense . So good luck with it . Yeah , let me know how it goes .