Step 2: Configure Conversion Goals

Last Updated: Oct 18, 2018 04:51PM PDT

awe.some conversion goals enable you to understand how user sharing impacts your business objectives. Simply add our conversion tag into your confirmation page, and we’ll show you how sharing drives conversions like signups and sales — or any other action that’s important to your business.

How Does awe.some Track Conversions?

awe.some tracks conversions in two ways: as counts and as values. Counts tell you how many times a conversion goal was triggered, and Values tell you what the value of the conversion was. Lets look at an example:

You’re a retailer selling artisanal pickles online for $5.00 each (yes, they’re awesome pickles!). In awe.some, you set up a conversion goal called “Pickle Sales”. Every time someone buys a pickle, you trigger the “Pickle Sales” conversion goal, and pass us the the price of the pickle. Our system will automatically increment the conversion goal “count” by one, and store the sales price of the pickle ($5.00) as the conversion value.  So, after having sold 10 pickles, the “count” for the conversion goal is 10, and the “value” is $50.00. 

When a conversion is triggered, awe.some automatically increments the conversion “count” by one, however the conversion “value” must be defined by you. So, like in the example above, you may want to pass us the sales price as the conversion “value”. If the conversion has no inherent value — or if you’re only concerned with getting a count of how many times a conversion occurred — you can pass a “value” of zero (0) to us. However please be aware that a conversion value — even if it is zero — is always required.

Setting Up Conversion Goals

Setting up a conversion goal is fairly straightforward — however, you will need to add some code to your website, so a basic understanding of HTML and JavaScript is helpful.

Step 1: Turn On Conversion Tracking

Start by logging into your awe.some account and navigating to the Project Settings screen. Here you must specify where any conversion goals you have will take place. Most of the time this is going to be the primary domain name of your website.

Step 2: Define Your Conversion Goals

On the Conversions page you can define up to 10 different conversion goals for your project. To define a goal, simply enter a name into the the Conversion Goal Label box. Be sure to take note of the Goal ID, as you will need this when you want to trigger that specific conversion goal.

Step 3: Deploy the awe.some JavaScript Library

Copy and paste the code snippet below onto every page in your website. It is designed to work in both HTTP and HTTPS, and loads asynchronously to ensure your page renders as fast as possible. This script is the same as the one used to generate our Share Buttons, so if you already have our share buttons on each page of your site, you can skip this step.

<script>
var AWESM = AWESM || {};

AWESM.api_key = ‘XXXXXXXXXX’;

(function() {
var js = document.createElement(‘script’); js.type = ‘text/javascript’; js.async = true;
js.src = ‘//widgets.awe.sm/v3/widgets.js?key=’ + AWESM.api_key + ‘&async=true’;
var s = document.getElementsByTagName(‘script’)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(js,s);
})();
</script>

Be sure to replace “XXXXXXXXXX” with your own awe.some API key. Not sure what you API key is? No problem — You can find it on the Project Settings screen.

Step 4: Determine Your Conversion Tracking Method

There are two ways to enable conversion tracking in awe.some. The first method uses Javascript, and the second method uses a special image that you embed in your page. Keep reading for an explanation of each approach to determine which will work best for your situation.

  • Javascript Method:

    To track a conversion using JavaScript you will need to paste a small line of JavaScript code into the source code of your “confirmation” page. If you do not have a confirmation page, you can also trigger a conversion dynamically by calling AWESM.convert(); method.

  • Pixel Tracking Method:

    If you are unable to use Javascript, another approach to tracking conversions is to use awe.some’s pixel tracking. This method uses a standard HTML Image tag <IMG> to tell awe.some a conversion has taken place. Because this image is only 1 pixel wide by 1 pixel tall, it will be invisible to your users. This image tag should also be placed on your confirmation page.

Step 5: Triggering A Conversion Goal

Once you have selected your conversion tracking method, you’ll need to “trigger” a conversion so that awe.some can track it. You’ll normally want to trigger your conversion after a user has completed a specific action. If you are interested in tracking product sales, you’ll trigger the conversion after the user completes the checkout process. If your goal is to click a link, you’ll trigger a conversion when that link is clicked on.

When triggering a conversion you need to include 2 parameters. The first parameter is the ID of the Conversion Goal being triggered, and the second is the “value” of the conversion.

Parameter 1: Conversion Goal ID

This is the Conversion Goal ID of the conversion the user has completed. If you want to trigger your first goal, enter “goal_1” into the first parameter, enter “goal_2” to trigger your second goal, and so on. You can find a list of conversion goals you’ve defined under Project Settings.

Parameter 2: Conversion Value

The second parameter is the “value” of the conversion. Every conversion must have a value — even if that value is 0 (zero). The value of this parameter must also always be a number, and may not contain any special characters (like periods, commas, dollar signs, etc). So, if you had a conversion value of $5.00 you must remove the dollar sign ($) and the period (.) before passing the value (500) into awe.some. Also, please be aware that if you want to track the value of $5.00 you should pass in ‘500’ and not ‘5’. Because of the way awe.some counts values, if you pass in ‘5’, we will think you are passing in $0.05 NOT $5.00.  Basically, if you are passing a monetary amount, always include both dollars, and cents in the value.

Here is an example of how to trigger a conversion using javascript:

<script>
AWESM.convert(‘goal_1’, 500);
</script>

And here is how to trigger the same conversion goal, using pixel tracking:

<img src=”//widgets.awe.some/conversions?key=XXXXXXXXXX&conversion_type=goal_2&conversion_value=500″ alt=”” width=”1″ height=”1″ />

Tracking Performance Of Conversion Goals

After you’ve got your conversion goals deployed, you can view the data that is collected using our reporting interface. If you would like to integrate conversion data into your application you can do so using our Stats APIs. Conversion data can be added, by including the parameter “with_conversions=true” with your API call. More information can be found in the Stats API documentation.

Up Next? Setting Up Custom Attribute Tagging

Now that you’ve set up sharing buttons and defined your conversion goals, you should refine the data you are collecting. In our next Getting Started Guide, we will help you understand how to define custom share attributes. By “tagging” each user share, it becomes possible to analyze and filter your sharing data based on attributes that are important to your business.