Conversion Action -
A conversion action is a specific customer action that you've defined as valuable to your business, such as an online purchase or phone call. Tracking conversion actions lets you see how your ads lead to those meaningful actions.
Steps to create a conversion action -
In your Google Ads account, click the tools and settings icon.
Click the Measurement > Conversions drop down in the menu.
Click Summary.
In the summary, click + New conversion action.
Select Website and click Next.
Enter your website domain and click Scan in order to:
Detect if your website has the Google tag (if you don’t have one on your website, you’ll be shown the Google tag code to put on your website). If you don’t have the Google tag yet you can set one up.
Next: Choose how to set up your conversion action
You can set up conversion actions in 2 ways:
Method 1: Set up conversions with a URL
Use this method if you want to track a page load as a conversion and you don’t need to customize your measurement setup. This is the fastest and easiest way to set up a conversion action.
Method 2: Set up conversions manually
Use this method if you need to track clicks on buttons or links, or you want to customize your event tag with value tracking, transaction IDs, or other custom parameters.
8. Click on Set Up conversions manually
9. Select the relevant category. If you can’t find the right goal there, click on other.
10. Add the conversion name
11. Select use different value for each conversion and default value as Rs. 1 for purchase action. For others, you can click on “Don't use a value for this conversion action”
12. Click on count “every” conversion
13. Rest of the settings are configured automatically, make sure to switch the “Enhanced conversions” ON, especially for the purchase event. Post which you can click on “Done”
14. The conversion action is ready to record the data.
Please note that these conversion actions will record the data that has to be configured via GTM.
Primary & Secondary Conversion Actions
In Google Ads, actions that you want your customers to take, or conversion actions, are grouped together into conversion goals. For example, the “Purchase” conversion goal contains all your conversion actions in which customers make a purchase.
For your goal, you want to select which conversion actions should be used for bidding optimization and included in your reporting. Those key actions are called “primary conversion actions”. Possible conversion actions that are not directly used for campaign optimization are called “secondary”. Most conversion actions can be set to either primary or secondary, but some conversion actions aren't able to be set as primary or secondary.
For example, store sales direct conversion actions can't be set as primary, and store visits can't be set to secondary.
When you set up conversion tracking, you will be selecting primary and secondary conversion actions that support a defined goal:
Primary actions: These are conversion actions that are reported in the “Conversions” column in your reports and used for bidding as long as the standard goal they are part of is used for bidding.
Secondary actions: These conversion actions are for observation only. They are used for reporting in the “All conversions” column in your reports, but not for bidding, even if the goal they are included in is used for bidding. The one exception is if the secondary action is part of a custom goal, in which case it’s used for bidding.
However, note that store sales direct conversion actions can’t be used for bidding, even if used in a custom goal.
How to update the primary and secondary setting for a conversion action
In your Google Ads account, click the tools and settings Icon.
Click the Conversions drop down in the section menu.
Click Summary.
Find the goal that includes the conversion action you’d like to edit.
Click Edit settings.
In the "Conversion goal and action optimization" section, select either Primary or Secondary.
Click Save.
Best Practices
Below are basic conversion goals best practices to get the most out of campaign performance in Google Ads:
Categorize your conversion actions: Whenever possible, your conversion actions should be grouped into standard conversion goals, such as “Purchase” or “Contact”, and these standard goals should be used for optimizing your campaigns. This alignment allows us to optimize your Ads experience and campaign performance to drive results. You should not categorize conversion actions under conversion goals that do not have semantic meaning, such as "Other" or "Page View", if a goal exists that matches the description of your conversion action.
Include at least one primary conversion action: Each conversion goal should have at least one primary conversion action grouped within it. This ensures that campaigns using automated bidding can optimize towards actions that drive value to your business. Primary conversion actions will appear in the “Conversions” column in your reports.
Add your goals to all relevant campaigns: In order for a campaign to optimize to a particular conversion goal, it needs to be included in that campaign’s goals. All conversion goals using the “account-default” setting will be automatically used in campaigns using the account-default setting. However, if you have campaigns using campaign-specific goals, or conversion goals not opted into the account-default setting, you will need to manually add goals from the campaign settings or via bulk edits, which are outlined in the instructions below.