Pro Tip:
Did you know you can boost your marketing confidence by enabling Smart Traffic mode on your account? Find out more by reading our Getting Started with Smart Traffic documentation.
Conversion goals enable Unbounce to track the success of your landing pages.
This article describes how to set a conversion goal within the Classic Unbounce Builder, how conversion tracking works, and additional best practices.
Want to learn more on how to track conversion with Smart Builder? See our documentation: Setting Conversion Goals in Smart Builder.
You can choose the action you'd like to measure as a conversion by clicking on the Goals tab, then scrolling to the Conversion Goals section in the Classic Builder:
The suggested conversion goals provided include elements on your page such as links, text links, button links, or forms, any of which you can select to track as a conversion.
How it works
Let's say your visitor completes a conversion action, such as submitting to a lead gen form or clicking a specific link.
If you tick this element within the Conversion Goals section, any completion of that conversion action will count as a conversion within the Page Overview (form submission details will also track within the Leads table).
Working with Smart Builder?
Setting conversion goals in the Smart Builder interface is slightly different from the Classic Builder. See Setting Conversion Goals in Smart Builder for more details.
Setting Multiple Conversion Goals
While you can set and track multiple conversion goals, they will all count towards your total conversions count, as we don't yet have the reporting to let you separate the conversion stats. It's generally better to only have one conversion goal, but we recognize the importance of secondary calls to action.
It's on the list of improvements for the future. For more custom reporting, we recommend integrating your pages with Google Analytics.
Note:
Multiple conversion goal clicks from the same browser will only count once towards the total goal. This is due to the nature of conversion tracking with our Unbounce cookies.Setting Up External Conversion Tracking in the Classic Builder
An external conversion is an action that takes place on a page other than your Unbounce landing page.
Unbounce allows you track external conversions by embedding our tracking script on your target conversion page. This is great when you're using an Unbounce landing page to drive online purchases or if the actual conversion action doesn't happen on the Unbounce landing page itself.
Note:
Update March 2023: For customers who have emailed our Support team in the past to obtain the WordPress external conversion tracking script, please update the script to the one listed in the steps below. Our teams will be depreciating the WordPress-specific external tracking script, so please replace it with the one below.
What You'll Need
- A thank-you page or confirmation page (the page that follows the conversion action).
- This includes editing access the source code of this page since external conversion tracking works with the help of a unique tracking script.
- An Unbounce page built with the Classic Builder.
- Both the Unbounce and conversion confirmation pages must exist on the exact root domains.
- For example, an Unbounce page with a URL of "promo.mycompany.com" and the conversion confirmation page with a URL of "www.mycompany.com" will work with external conversion tracking, since the root domains (mycompany.com) are the same.
Here are steps to set up external conversion tracking with your page in the Classic Builder.
- Navigate to your page in the Classic Builder.
- Click the Goals tab, then locate the Conversion Goals section.
- Untick all conversion goals - this step is key:
- Clear all of the listed conversion goals.
- By turning off all Conversion Goals on your Unbounce page, only visits to the external confirmation page will count as conversions.
- Save & repeat for all page variants (if you have more variants).
- Republish your page.
Navigate to the external page your visitors will land on once they complete the conversion action. - Launch the source code, and insert the following script. Be sure to place the script before the closing <body> tag:
You're all set! If a visitor follows the page funnel (landing page > conversion action, such as a form sign up/purchase, etc., > thank-you page), the external tracking script will count a conversion.
External conversion tracking functionality in Unbounce (how it works)
When a visitor lands on the conversion confirmation page, the script will look for the Unbounce visitor cookie, and if it finds one, will make a tracking request back to the Unbounce servers.
We then select the page visitors have seen most recently, and if we have not previously recorded a conversion for that visitor, we'll bump your conversion count by one.
External Conversion Tracking FAQs
When using External Conversion Tracking, do I need to configure any Conversion Goals in the Unbounce page builder?
Nope! Just adding the script to your conversion page is enough.
Should I keep the conversion goals I've already configured?
That depends. Most likely, you would remove any URL-click conversion goals so that a conversion records when your visitors lands on your thank-you/confirmation page.
Will External Conversion Tracking slow down my page(s)?
No, the script itself is hosted on Amazon's CloudFront CDN for high-speed serving, and by adding the script just before the closing </body> element of your page, it won't affect the rest of your document loading.
Can I use External Conversion Tracking alongside Smart Traffic?
Yes, any pages enabled with Smart Traffic support both Unbounce conversion tracking AND external conversion tracking. Check out our documentation to learn more about Smart Traffic.
Will the External Conversion Tracking Cookie expire?
Yes, the tracking cookie expires after 72 hours, which means that for the conversion to count, your visitor must trigger the conversion within 72 hours of visiting the originating page.
Are there any limitations to the External Tracking script that Unbounce uses?
The External Tracking script currently identifies the conversion page based on the last page visited by your visitor; this may or may not work for you.
If you're currently using Unbounce to drive just one type of conversion (such as a newsletter sign-up, or purchase), this will work fine.
However, if you're using Unbounce to drive multiple types of conversion, and your visitors are likely to see both types of Unbounce pages, you might have conversions attributed to the incorrect page.
Can I use External Conversion Tracking to track form submissions from a third-party form or embedded form?
Yes, you can! Do ensure that your third-party form links to a separate thank-you or confirmation page where you can install the external conversion script. Be sure that your landing page exists on the same root domain as your third-party confirmation page.
Can External Conversion Tracking work with multi-page funnels?
Multi-page funnels and external conversion tracking (with an embedded form for example) may cause some tracking implications and discrepancies. This has to do with how external conversion tracking works to fire a conversion back to Unbounce, and that multi-page funnels are often a hacky workaround solution to tracking conversions across multiple pages.
If you're adamant about setting up a multi-page funnel, we recommend utilizing Unbounce forms and straying away from external conversion tracking.
