With Google Ads conversion tracking set up, you can see which one of your Google Ads advertisements generates the most sales and conversions on your website. If you want to see which ads for your Shopify store attract the most customers, you can use Google Ads conversion tracking.

While Google Enhanced Conversions is still in beta, that’s no reason to shy away from using this new revolutionary tool. Google’s new technology could help you with your ad campaigns and tracking as first-party data is more valuable than ever before.

A lot has happened to the way we think about digital privacy over the past few years. From public outcry over government surveillance programs to the introduction of “Do Not Track” settings in browsers like Chrome and Firefox, privacy has become a major concern for everyone using their computer on a regular basis.

More recently, Google and Facebook have publicly shared initiatives that use first-party data in place of third-party cookies to provide advertisers with insights into their ad campaign performance. Today we’ll be discussing how you can use Google Ads Conversion to further your understanding of your customers.

What is Google Ads Enhanced Conversions?

In Google’s own words…

“Enhanced Conversions is a feature that can improve the accuracy of your conversion measurement. It supplements your existing conversion tags by sending hashed first-party conversion data from your website to Google in a privacy-safe way.”

Enhanced Conversions, works like Facebook's Advanced Matching. It enables Google Ads to collect customer data from a conversion action and then connect that data back to ads viewed on other devices.

It is a tool that allows you to share additional information about your conversions with Google Ads in order to improve conversion tracking. When you use the standard Google Ads conversion tracking, for example, you send the order ID and revenue, and you can also send the products that were purchased. But with Google Ads Enhanced Conversion, you can send even more customer information such as email, name, address, and phone number.

How does Google Ads Enhanced Conversions work?

Well, it’s pretty simple really – if you have an eCommerce site that allows users to place an order by clicking off of your site (to a payment gateway or something similar), you can now tell Google which URL represents a successful conversion. Google will now be able to track all of the keywords leading up to that conversion and attribute them properly in your AdWords reports.

You are basically allowing Google to store more information, and use it for more advanced customer matching and provide greater accuracy with customer prospecting.

In order to use Google Enhanced Conversions, you need to opt into the service and install a little bit of code on your site.

What are Google Ads Enhanced Conversions’ benefits?

What this means for your business is that a larger portion of your budget will be spent on the impressions that most closely align with a customer who has the highest likelihood to convert. In addition, retargeted ads will become more relevant for customers, increasing their value.

How do you set Google Ads Enhanced Conversions up?

Google is asking you to give them more information, which they can then use to help you. They’ll use it to deliver more relevant ads and provide greater accuracy when targeting.

Sounds simple enough, right? If you’re not so adept at working the backend of your website, the process of setting up Google Enhanced Conversions is a beast, to say the least. We suggest working with your web developer as this can be tricky for those who are unfamiliar with the code behind the web.

If you are comfortable, however, we’ll share the steps with you below.

Step 1: Go to the Shopify Checkout Settings page.

Log into your Shopify Admin Panel.  Select Checkout from the Settings (Gear Icon) menu.

Step 2: Create a Google Ads Conversion Code and copy it.

Log in to Google Ads in a new browser tab and choose Conversions under the Measurement column from the tools and settings menu in the upper right corner.

Log in to Google Ads in a new browser tab and choose Conversions under the Measurement column from the tools and settings menu in the upper right corner.

To get started, click the large blue + symbol (New Conversion Action).

Photo from PixelYourSite

Choose website as your tracking template.

It will then request that you scan the URL of your website. Enter your URL and hit the scan button.

Scroll to the bottom of the page and choose to manually install the conversion action.

Then take the following steps:

1. Conversion name
1. Enter any name you want.
2. Category
1. Choose Purchase / Sale
3. Value
1. Use different values for each conversion
4. Attribution model
1. Choose Position-Based (recommended for growth based businesses)
5. The rest can be on default.

Continue by clicking Create to create a conversion action for your website. You have the option of installing the tag yourself.

NOTE: Enabling Enhanced Conversions is completely optional as this feature may not be available in all accounts yet. So you can proceed with the steps below, except those relating to improved conversions. (Proceed to Step 3)

Next, check the box with Turn on enhanced conversions. Then input your website URL and click Check URL.

Enabling improved conversions allows Google to increase its conversion tracking accuracy. Due to Apple's IOS14 lack of a tracking prompt, this appears to be required.

You can pick the tag to use if you have multiple tags installed. We suggest going with Global Tag.

If you can't use the Global site tag, make sure you have Google Ads Remarketing installed.

Leave the Tag type alone. Then check the box next to Email and choose Javascript. Enter the following values:

Email

• enhanced_conversion_data.email

Repeat the steps for Phone and Name and Address

Phone

• enhanced_conversion_data.phone_number

First name

• enhanced_conversion_data.first_name

Last name

• enhanced_conversion_data.last_name

Street address

• enhanced_conversion_data.home_address.street

City

• enhanced_conversion_data.home_address.city

State

• enhanced_conversion_data.home_address.region

Country

• enhanced_conversion_data.home_address.country

Postal code

• Enhanced_conversion_data.home_address.postal_code

Again, choose to Install tag yourself. Then click on download snippet for the Event snippet.

Step 3: Edit and Paste Your Google Ads Conversion Tracking Code

Return to Shopify and scroll down until you find Order Processing. Towards the bottom of this section, there is a field marked Additional Scripts where you can paste code.

Copy the send to value (seen below) and replace fa send to with your value in the code template.

Step 4: Testing and Verification

Verifying

To verify, you can check if the code is working by going to Google Ads > Tools and Settings > Conversions and see if the status is verified.

Testing

To confirm if the conversion tracking is successfully implemented, first launch Tag Assistant and make a test payment in the new window that appears. Check the data in Tag Assistant once you've reached the final thank you page.

Enhanced Conversions Troubleshooting

If you run into any issues, check first to see if you've waited at least three to seven days as it takes time for Google to collect the data.

Coverage:

There's a chance you'll run into coverage issues. This can occur when consumers pay using a third-party payment processor (PayPal), which may require them to submit customer data on a separate domain rather than directly on your website, as they would if they did not use a third-party payment processor.

Match status:

If you're experiencing trouble with the match status, it's possible that not all of your customers are filling out all of the fields in your checkout. To track only emails or mandatory fields in your checkout, you could delete the attributes from your Google Ads conversion list.

You can prevent sending empty fields to Google by excluding non-mandatory fields.

Enable Remarketing

Install remarketing for Shopify to keep track of your current website visitors. Keep in mind that a return visitor has more chances of converting than a new visitor. Use this data to create display remarketing ads and target specific audiences.

Enable Micro Conversions

To track smaller conversion actions (i.e. add to cart, view cart, and add a delivery address). Then add Google Analytics Goals to your Google Analytics account.

Wrapping up…

Only time will tell just how valuable Enhanced Conversions and Google’s new privacy rules could be for advertisers. Either way, if you haven’t done so already, it might be worth your time to benchmark your success with Google Ads in this regard before the technology rolls out worldwide. After all, first-party data is likely to take on even greater value as the years go by.

Thanks for reading, we hope you enjoyed the article. If there are any other site conversion tracking tips that you would like to know by all means drop a note in the comments section. And if you found this very helpful, please share it on your social media platforms and with your colleagues.

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