Lightweight Ecommerce Conversion Tracking

The Problem with Google Analytics, Facebook Ads & Other Platforms

You want to know the initial source of traffic, referrers, campaigns, ads and pages that drive your leads, revenue, sales, purchases, and orders. You want to learn why your customer are converting.

Most analytic software and ad platforms make this extremly hard to find out with confusing attribution models and complex reports. Ad platforms especially like to show you conversion tracking which make the ad appear to have the best results.

There is a simpler way, without being a data nerd.

I call it the 80/20 approach to conversion. Just use First Click attribution to figure out how customers are discovering you and Last Click attribution to discover what drove them to convert.

First of all there is no such thing as 100% accurracy conversion tracking. The goal is to get a close as possble with the least amount of effort. By looking at just first click and last click you get this information.

Take for example someone discovers your brand and website through a blog post, they have several more interactions and then they see a retargeting ad that converts them.

The most important thing to measure is what is the blog post they discovered you by and which ad made them convert, not the messy middle.

What is Last Click Attribution

Last click attribution means what is the last thing they clicked on before converting. This is the default attribution model in Google Analytics and most ad platforms. This is the most common attribution model and the easiest to understand.

For example, let's say someone initially visits your website through a Facebook or Google ad. They leave your website and then come back the next day by typing your website URL directly into their web browser and they make a purchase.

When you look in Google Analytics the source of that purchase would be “Direct” since this was the last-click interaction with your website.

But in this scenario above you really want to know which Facebook or Google Ad initially drove them to your site to make the purchase.

So you can see the problem. You are not getting a clear picture of how you are acquiring your customers.

You just spent lots of time, money and effort on marketing yet you don't have a clear picture of what is working.

You don't what your best channels, campaigns, blog posts, and ads are.

So how do you solve this issue?

First Click attribution to the rescue!

First-click attribution sometimes referred to as first-touch or first-interaction attribution, will tell you the initial original source of the customer or lead.

This is super helpful because you can understand if what you are doing is driving sales and how new customers initially find you.

• They may have found you through an ad.
• They may have been referred from another website.
• They may have discovered your blog post through a search.
• They may have clicked a link from an email campaign.
• They may have come through Google.

Wouldn't it be a game changer to have this information? It would optimize your content marketing efforts. It would help you pick winner and loser ads. It would save you money, time and guide your marketing efforts.

Combine first touch and last touch attribution and you now have a simple way to measure and optimize your marketing efforts.