Set up the two or three that represent somebody trying to contact you: form submissions, phone taps, and email clicks. Anything beyond that dilutes the number rather than improving it.

Traffic on its own is a headcount

A property collecting page views tells you how many people came and which pages they looked at.

It tells you nothing about whether any of them wanted anything, which is the only question the business actually has.

Without conversions configured, every subsequent question is unanswerable: which page produces enquiries, whether advertising works, whether a change helped.

Which is why this is the setup step that matters, and why it is worth doing before learning anything else about the interface.

The two or three to have

For a service business those are the entire list. Everything else people configure is detail, and detail dilutes rather than clarifies.

Why the phone tap matters most

The one most often missing, and for a trades or service business frequently the largest source of contact.

Somebody on a phone who taps your number is contacting you, and it is invisible unless configured, because the interaction leaves the site immediately.

Businesses regularly discover that taps outnumber form submissions substantially, having previously believed the form was their main route.

Setting it up means recording a click on the telephone link as an event, which most tag setups can do without touching the site.

It requires the number to be a proper tappable link rather than plain text, which is worth confirming while you are there.

A number that is not a link cannot be tapped or measured, and both of those are losses.

Recording and counting are separate

The step that catches people, and it is worth repeating because it produces empty reports.

An event being collected does not make it a conversion. It sits among all the other events until you mark it.

The toggle is in the events list and takes one click per event.

Anybody who has configured events and sees no conversions reported has almost always missed this, rather than having a tracking problem.

Check the list a day after configuring, since events sometimes need to have fired once before they appear as available to mark.

Keep the number small

The discipline that determines whether the figure means anything.

Marking a dozen things as conversions produces a large number that describes nothing, because it mixes somebody requesting a quote with somebody scrolling to the bottom of a page.

There is also a limit on how many conversions a property will accept, which is generous and worth not filling with noise.

Two to four, all representing an attempt to make contact, keeps the figure comparable to something you can verify: the enquiries in your inbox.

Where you want to watch something softer, such as scroll depth or a video being played, record it as an event without marking it as a conversion.

That way it is available when you want it and does not contaminate the number you report.

A worked example

A trades business set up the new property and marked six things as conversions: a form submission, an email click, a phone tap, a page scroll, a file download, and a visit to their pricing page.

Their monthly conversion figure was a large number that bore no relationship to the amount of work coming in.

Reducing it to three, all of which were somebody making contact, produced a number that matched their inbox within a couple each month.

That match is what made it usable, because they could then trust it enough to compare months.

The phone tap turned out to be roughly twice the form submissions, which changed where they put their attention on the site.

They kept the other three as events, unmarked, which cost nothing and left them available.

Check it against reality

The verification step, which is what turns a configured number into a trusted one.

After a month, compare the conversion count against the actual enquiries you received.

They will not match exactly, and they should be in the same neighbourhood.

Substantially more conversions than enquiries usually means something is firing on page load, or firing twice, or being counted for your own visits.

Substantially fewer usually means the event is not firing on phones, or the form redirects in a way the tracking misses.

Where the two disagree, trust your inbox and investigate the configuration, which is the correct order of confidence.

Give them a value if you can

An optional step that changes what the number is worth.

If you know roughly what an enquiry is worth to you, in the sense of what proportion convert and what an average job is, you can attach a value to the conversion.

That turns a count into an estimated figure, which makes comparing two sources of traffic considerably more meaningful.

A rough number is fine and is much better than none, since the purpose is comparison rather than accounting.

Where you have no idea what an enquiry is worth, that is itself worth working out, and it is a more valuable exercise than anything in the analytics interface.

The counter-case

Conversion tracking measures a slice, and it is worth knowing which slice.

A business whose enquiries mostly arrive as calls to a number people read rather than tap, or by walk-in, or by word of mouth, is measuring a minority of what happens.

Attributing value precisely also invites false confidence, since the customer who found you through a search, saw you on a listing, and then telephoned a week later appears as none of it.

And there is a privacy dimension to recording more than you need, which argues for the short list rather than the long one.

Set up two or three, verify them against your inbox, and keep asking customers how they found you.

The setup

  1. Confirm your phone number is a tappable link.
  2. Record form submissions as an event.
  3. Record phone taps and email clicks.
  4. Mark those as conversions, not just events.
  5. Keep the total to two to four.
  6. Compare against your inbox after a month.
  7. Attach a rough value if you know one.

Step six is what makes the figure trustworthy, and until it has been done the number is a configuration rather than a measurement.

Tracking calls specifically is covered in measuring an ad that produces a phone call.

Frequently asked questions

Why set up conversions at all?

Because traffic alone tells you how many people arrived and nothing about whether any wanted something. Without conversions, no later question is answerable.

Which ones does a small business need?

Contact form submitted, phone number tapped, email address clicked, and a booking or quote if you have one. For a service business that is the entire list.

Why does the phone tap matter?

Because for a trades or service business it is frequently the largest source of contact and is invisible unless configured. Taps often outnumber form submissions substantially.

Why are my conversions showing zero?

Usually because the events are being collected but were never marked as conversions. That is a separate toggle in the events list.

How many should I have?

Two to four, all representing an attempt to make contact. A dozen produces a large number that mixes a quote request with somebody scrolling to the bottom of a page.

How do I know it is right?

Compare the monthly count against the enquiries in your inbox. They will not match exactly and should be in the same neighbourhood. Trust the inbox if they disagree.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

New property recording only traffic?

Set up form submissions and phone taps, mark both as conversions, then check them against your inbox next month.

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