I use adwords to bring traffic to my site. I have some questions with conversion tracking.
My site runs a hosted service and it lets users to register for a trial account. This account can be upgraded to a paid one if user wishes so.
Right now, I have the adwords conversion code in the user upgrade page. Since the number of users upgrading is a small fraction of the number of users coming to my site, my adwords campaign is showing an abysmally low conversion rate. I know that if I put the conversion code in the signup page, I will get a better conversion rate as the number of users signing up is good.
My question here is - what should I be tracking as a conversion? Should I consider the number of registrations or the number of upgrades to paid account? Since my campaigns are showing low conversion rate, will it effect the performance of my campaign in any way?
1% could be a resounding success for one campaign and utter failure for another.
adwords doesn't really care what happens when they get there - they just want clicks.
Updating your conversion coding will not affect the performance of your Adwords campaign.
One of the reasons your conversions may be so low for the upgrade is because people often clear their cache and cookies and tracking might be lost if there is any time lapse between the initial trial and the actual sign up.
Also consider tracking them differently - the initial sign up page as a lead and tracking the signup page as a signup.
justshelley: how do i track signup and upgrade differently in adwords? Can you elaborate please?
i think your main focus of attention should be new sign-ups. People who already have an account, but are looking to upgrade are unlikely to come to your site via a search engine i'd think.
You can put different tracking codes on different pages to distinguish between sign-ups and upgrades. That way you can always know exactly how the different parts of your business model perform...
When you set up conversion coding (or update it), you can go through the Adwords conversion code wizard (campaign management ¦ conversion tracking ¦ get conversion page code). Choose lead for your initial sign up page and then follow the instructions for setting up your coding. Then repeat and choose sign up and set that coding up for your upgrade page.
