I am interested in tracking from Oplayo: Send me a non-binding request

Website tracking involves collecting user data and observing user behavior on a website. Various methods and tools are available for this, such as Google Analytics, Matomo, MS Clarity, IP Meta and LeadInfo in the B2B sector. A professionally set up tracking (measurement concept) in conjunction with a marketing dashboard tells you what is successful on your website and which elements require optimization. In addition, even minor programming errors can be quickly identified and rectified.

Why is website tracking essential and what to do with it?

It is crucial for the evaluation of online marketing activities. What you cannot evaluate should not be advertised! You can use the collected data to measure success and use the resulting findings to optimize your website, but also for SEO and ads, which will make your measures more successful. To understand user behavior, cookies and now often "device data" based on AI are stored when a website is visited. Among other things, this data contains a number that enables visitors to be (usually) uniquely identified. This allows users to be recognized when they visit the website again. Cookies help us, for example in an online store, to remember the selected items in the shopping cart. This promotes the optimization of user-friendliness and the customer journey with the aim of directly increasing sales. An example to illustrate this: a store operator knows his turnover at the end of the month, but does not know which products were sold or how many customers visited the store and what they looked at? The offline retailer would know this quite precisely. Without tracking, the "onliner" is missing out on a lot of potential! The concept of website tracking for B2C companies, especially in e-commerce, seems logical, but the situation is somewhat different in the B2B sector. Often nothing is sold directly on a B2B website. "What are we supposed to measure?" is a common question. The answer to this is simple, but also complex: you measure what contributes or can contribute to the company's success. After all, you wouldn't set up a trade fair stand without thinking about what it is intended to achieve and how the success of a trade fair can be measured.

What is being measured?

Precise tracking tells you what is actually happening on your site. A first example: Google Analytics 4 now measures "engaged sessions" (sessions with interaction) rather than dwell time. But the scroll depth is now measured at >90% by default. Who reads (scrolls) down a page over 90%? And who jumps off where? This is particularly important to know for all editorial content. A professional tracking concept implemented via the Google Tag Manager can help here. In addition to basic metrics such as the number of visitors, sessions, most visited pages, bounce rates and session duration, the following events should be considered critical to success:

• Contact made by email, telephone, form, chat (e.g. "Was the form completed and sent?")
• Was an attempt made to send the form? What error/error occurred?
• Website usage, such as accessing important key pages, i.e. which pages are viewed repeatedly by visitors or also:
• How did the visitor (e.g. via organic search (SEO)) come to my site for the very first time?
• On which pages do visitors drop out more frequently?
• Which pages perform worst? What could be the reason for this?
• Has purchase-relevant information (e.g. PDFs) been downloaded?
• Were tools such as product configurators or fault indicators used?
• For online purchases: Viewed products, shopping baskets, order processes and transactions - so what user behavior leads to a conversion?
• Why do 70% of buyers generally abandon shopping baskets during the ordering process?
• Are there differences in activity in geographical areas (e.g. do users from NRW buy more frequently?)
• At what time of day are visitors most active?
• Are parts of text copied from the website and if so? (e.g. because they continue to search?) Then these text passages should be taken into account for SEO and PPC.)
• Which buttons or internal links are clicked how often? (also good for A/B tests)
• Which advertising campaign generates the most conversions?
• Which path do users frequently take with their mouse (heat map)? Supported e.g. by MS Clarity or Hotjar.
• Only for websites aimed at B2B customers: Which companies come to my website (user recognition)?

This list is not exhaustive, but it shows that website tracking can and should initially record basic user activities. Of course, there are many other things that could be of interest to you - especially with regard to user guidance. If the events and interactions listed are tracked properly, you will know what is going on in your own "store", which products are being sold, which services are in demand or at least arouse the most interest.

The technical basis

The basis is a tag manager (e.g. from Google, Matomo or Adobe) in which all other tools and pixels are brought together. For cross-channel marketing activities, it is important to connect the platforms and advertising networks. The code snippets from, for example, Google Analytics, Google Ads, Meta (Facebook & Instagram), Microsoft Bing, Taboola, Outbrain etc., as well as LinkedIn and all other social media and other network analysis tools used are only integrated via the Tag Manager. In some cases, it may be necessary to add a data layer to the website in order to be able to measure more accurately. All interactions (for example, a purchase or playing a video) are distributed equally to all networks. A group is automatically created in each network for each interaction. For each of these groups, the network provides demographic characteristics, interests and topics for a certain number of users. These findings can then be used to optimize the measures. Furthermore, each network receives important data that is worth its weight in gold for the algorithms. Website tracking & web analytics - benefits of the data obtained Data collected in itself does not tell us much. It is simply there, often in abundance. You should therefore consider in advance what exactly you want to investigate or find out:

• What goal am I pursuing with my website?
• Which actions reflect the achievement of these goals?
• What information will help me achieve my goals?
• What hurdles prevent the achievement of objectives?

A well-prepared dashboard is needed to be able to react better to the findings later on! To stick with our comparison with an offline store, imagine this: Out of 100 potential customers who entered the store, 40 left immediately. 60 people took a closer look at products, but only one went to the checkout with the product or made an inquiry. So the question is: what prevented the other 99 potential customers from making a final purchase? In stationary retail, improvements could be made if you make the entrance area more inviting or display the products more prominently. You should therefore clarify questions such as: Are customers scared off by overly complex products right at the start of their tour through the shopping world? Are the routes designed in such a way that they inevitably lead to the checkout instead of ending in dead ends or even an alternative exit without a checkout? Website or supermarket - customers need to be guided. We can compare websites with supermarkets, even if not at first glance. Nowadays, their design is often based on scientific knowledge rather than just technology. It is not for nothing that bakeries spread the appetizing smell of fresh bread rolls in the entrance area. Supermarkets use fresh fruit and vegetables to signal right at the start of the customer journey that they want to do something good for the body.

Let's adapt these findings to the online world

Thanks to website tracking, we can determine which products or services are viewed most frequently and which are then actually purchased or requested. Are there offers that arouse more interest than others, but are used or requested less often? And what could be the reason for this? We can also work together to analyze which pages are most frequently used as entry pages and whether and why some pages lead to people leaving the website more often than others. Even on the last few meters to completing a purchase or filling out a lead form, email, download or contact form, users often abandon the site after all. In this case, it is particularly important to analyze the cause and then find ways to prevent this. The next important question arises when we delve into the topic of website tracking and deal with data: Which products or services and which user actions generate the most sales? And are they the ones that promise the highest margin? Here too, the e-commerce store has an advantage over the brick-and-mortar store, as these questions are often easier (not easier!) to answer for products than for services that require explanation. If a B2B website is more about collecting leads and, in most cases, supporting sales, scoring based on the proximity of an interaction to the conclusion of a contract is a good option.

The evaluation of interactions

You could use a point scale from 0 to 100 points, where 100 represents the action that promises the best leads, such as a requested product demonstration. A price inquiry would be worth 80 points, downloading an e-book (in exchange for the email address) 50 points. Subscribing to the newsletter is worth 30 points. This then allows you to determine the value of the website in terms of points or notional turnover for a period and compare it with others. You can use this scoring to determine precisely how the value develops from month to month. You can also examine months with high turnover, e.g. seasonal business, in detail in this way. You can also see whether certain entry pages generate a higher value. What makes this approach particularly worth mentioning, however, is an aspect that we have so far ignored. The great thing about websites in connection with tracking is not only that you can determine where users come from. Tracking also gives you information about which marketing measure has contributed to this. We'll leave out the details of "attribution" here for the sake of complexity. This is another fundamental difference between a website and a store. Let's briefly recall the one user from our supermarket example: If we knew exactly who of them came from where and what the impetus for the purchase or inquiry was, that would take you a considerable step forward in your marketing measures.

Acquisition in web analytics

In web analytics, acquisition describes the origin of traffic. It provides information about the source from which users visit the website. A single point of contact with prospective customers is almost never enough to persuade them to make a purchase. That's why we use attribution, which is designed to give the individual touchpoints their share of success. In Google Ads, for example, this is controlled by AI in so-called Performance Max campaigns. At LinkedIn, this is called Predictive Audiences and so on. These topics are fundamental areas of website tracking and can only be touched on here due to their complexity. As mentioned above, it is easy to find out online where visitors come from. This is a standard feature of all website analysis tools and does not need to be set up additionally (this would be standard tracking). The most common acquisition channels for companies are

• Search engines
• unpaid, organic search results
• Paid search results (e.g. via Google Ads, e.g. PAID Search or PAID Social)
• direct traffic
• Referrals from other websites (referrals)
• Organic social media
• newsletters

Try to find out which of these marketing channels brings you the most visitors and which channel ultimately generates the highest sales, the highest margins or the most relevant leads. Then you can intensify your marketing measures there. If everything has been set up correctly beforehand, you can see this in the analysis tool with just a few clicks. This can be based on actual sales or on the points scale described above. So far so good, doesn't sound that complex, does it? For many companies, reaching this level is already a real milestone and needs to be set up properly from a technical point of view. Especially when website tracking has only just begun.

What does marketing attribution mean?

Marketing attribution generally refers to the attribution of causes for actions. Marketing attribution therefore attempts to attribute the individual touchpoints, i.e. the various marketing channels and campaigns, with their share of the conclusion in order to be able to control marketing even more precisely. You guessed it - this is where it gets a little more complex. Very often, several contacts across different channels between the user and the company are necessary to persuade the interested person to make a purchase or submit an inquiry. How many of these touchpoints are necessary usually depends on the price and complexity of the product. A new pair of sneakers is bought more quickly than a new indoor heating system or a new designer sofa made in Italy.

An example of marketing attribution: At first glance, it may appear that most users bought after clicking on a Facebook ad. But was this really the sole impulse? They may have had their first point of contact on LinkedIn, for example, have already been to the website and seen another ad on Instagram because they landed in retargeting. The value of LinkedIn / Facebook / Instagram / YouTube marketing etc. should therefore also be taken into account throughout. When it comes to attribution, however, there are various models to consider. And additional software is often required to manage inquiries and analyze contacts right through to the conclusion, especially in B2B ... but that would go too far here.

This is what perfect tracking brings you

Now you've had a small taste of how incredibly much you can measure. You can actually measure too much (you can't see the wood for the trees). The trick is to distinguish between meaningful and non-meaningful and that takes time, experience and creativity. If you have a competent partner, you can expect the following result:

• Your site will rank better on Google over time
• Bad ads will be killed
• Successful ads will be pushed
• You know more about your target group (age, gender, preferences, place of residence, language...)
• You find out how and via which route your customers come to you (social media, ads, organically, via a link on another page, etc.)
• More people buy from you / fill out forms / interact with your site
• You know what your customers obviously do NOT want
• You find out where you are losing customers
• You find out which keywords are relevant for your visitors
• You save on media spend
• You increase your revenue
• The quality of your leads increases
• You learn how to improve your site

I am interested in Oplayo tracking: Send me a non-binding request

Is website tracking still allowed despite GDPR?

Two pieces of good news first: Yes, if we follow the rules of the General Data Protection Regulation, we are allowed to do so. And no, we won't go into any more detail on this complex topic here. Nevertheless, it is important to take a close look at the topic and create the necessary conditions. Consent management providers such as Cookiebot or Usercentrics are essential for effective consent to data processing.

Website tracking & analysis - the obligation to provide a dashboard and call to action

Anyone who operates an online presence should make use of the available options and utilize the available data. This is essential, especially with regard to marketing, as otherwise you are basically acting blindly instead of managing budgets efficiently and exploiting growth potential. Tracking also provides valuable information in relation to the customer journey on the website itself - after all, we want to be as inviting online as the tempting smell of bread rolls or fresh fruit and vegetables!

Conclusion

Without tracking, SEO or SEA (PPC) makes little sense. In the EU and other parts of the world, however, it must be coupled with a consent management tool - preferably plus "consent mode V2". You are what you measure! It brings you very clear advantages that should not be missed. After all, there is something on almost every site that can be done more efficiently to increase the success of the site in the long term. But, just collecting data alone won't get you anywhere. Without the right conclusions and reactions, it doesn't really do much in the end, which is why many beginners fail and give up. This is where you need an experienced & competent team that draws creative conclusions, takes action and provides you with further insights. And in addition to tracking, a few more things are needed for more sales.

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