Google offers 3 key tools for measuring ROI online. Here’s a quick overview of same:
e-Commerce Tracking:
If you sell online, the exact source and cost of every sale can be tracked using e-commerce tracking.
Goals:
Using goals to measure ROI is a bit less scientific as website owners must assign notional values to non e-commerce activities. For example, if 50% of people who visit the contact us page make contact, if 50% of those make a purchase and average contribution per purchase is £100, then in theory a visit to the contact page is worth £25 (50% of 50% of £100). Often, getting this data from businesses is difficult but for non e-commerce sites, where conversions take place offline, this is a tool that should be used. Other examples of goals include spending over a minute on the site or visiting more than 3 pages but assigning monetary values to such activities is virtually impossible. However, setting up such goals is still useful – for example, if you see a certain key-phrase tends to convert for the goals minimum page views and minimum time on site it is probably a decent key-phrase as opposed to one that never converts.
So what happened to conversion tracking in Google Adwords?
Conversion tracking in Adwords serves an identical purpose to goals in Analytics so is now redundant if you have an Analytics account linked to your Adwords account.
If you do set up goals in Analytics, then these should definitely be imported into Adwords as once imported, bidding options such as CPA (cost per acquisition) and conversion maximisation bidding can be utilised.
I will cover CPA and conversion maximisation bidding in a later post as both are extremely useful tools.
In short, if you sell online, set up e-commerce tracking. If not, set up goals and import them to Adwords. If you would ratehr we took care of this, then contact us and we will be delighted to help!