Conversion tracking for small teams

This is one of those topics that looks small until it costs you something. Most advice about conversion tracking assumes a team that does not exist at your size. Here is the version that does not.

More dashboards rarely produce more decisions. It is worth deciding this deliberately rather than inheriting whatever the last person set up.

What to keep

If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it. The cost of getting this wrong is rarely visible on the day it happens. The failure mode is not doing it wrong, it is doing it once and assuming it stays done.

What to drop

Process that exists to coordinate ten people is overhead when there are two of you. Getting it slightly wrong is survivable. Ignoring it entirely is not.

Where to start

Test that the tracking fires before relying on it. None of that requires a large budget, only a decision and someone to own it. The failure mode is not doing it wrong, it is doing it once and assuming it stays done.

How to tell if yours is fine

Data you do not trust is worse than no data, because it gets quoted anyway. Three things worth confirming about conversion tracking before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Test that the tracking fires before relying on it — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

The point is not perfection, it is knowing which of these you have consciously chosen to skip.