Conversion tracking: a practical guide

This is one of those topics that looks small until it costs you something. This guide covers what conversion tracking actually involves, where it usually goes wrong, and how to tell whether yours is in reasonable shape.

Measurement is only useful when someone has agreed in advance what they would do differently. Nothing below assumes a large team or a large budget — most of it is a decision somebody has to make and then write down.

Why it matters

If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it. The teams that handle this well are rarely the ones with the biggest budgets. The failure mode is not doing it wrong, it is doing it once and assuming it stays done.

For most businesses the question is not whether this matters but how much of it is worth doing right now. That depends on what you are trying to achieve in the next few months, not on best practice in the abstract. The cost of getting this wrong is rarely visible on the day it happens.

The practical version

Track the actions that map to revenue. None of that requires a large budget, only a decision and someone to own it. The teams that stay on top of it are the ones who put it on a calendar rather than a wish list.

Data you do not trust is worse than no data, because it gets quoted anyway. The version that works in practice is usually less elaborate than the version described in the guides.

Test that the tracking fires before relying on it. It is worth being explicit about, because assumptions differ quietly. Assume whoever inherits this will have half your context and none of your patience.

A working checklist

If you want a quick read on where you stand, work through this. Anything you cannot answer confidently is where to start.

• If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it
• Track the actions that map to revenue
• Test that the tracking fires before relying on it
• Someone is named as the owner, not just assumed to be
• There is a date in the calendar to review it again
• The decision and the reasoning behind it are written down somewhere findable
• You could explain the current setup to a new hire in five minutes

Common failure modes

The most common failure is not doing this badly. It is doing it once, during a launch, and never revisiting it. Circumstances move, the setup does not, and the gap widens quietly until something breaks or somebody notices the numbers.

• It was configured during a launch and has not been touched since
• Different people in the business believe different things are true about it
• There is no way to tell whether the last change helped or hurt
• The only person who understands it has left, or is about to

More dashboards rarely produce more decisions. In practice this is a scheduling problem more than a technical one.

How we approach it

On our projects this gets handled during the build rather than added afterwards, because retrofitting it costs several times more than including it. We write down what was decided and why, so the next person to touch it is not guessing.

If you are working with someone else, the questions worth asking are simple: who owns this, how will we know it is working, and what happens when it needs to change?

What to do next

Pick the single item from the checklist above that would cause the most trouble if it turned out to be wrong. Fix that one, confirm it worked, then move on. None of this needs a rewrite. Most of it is a morning's work once someone decides to do it.