A guide to capturing Google Ads data on Squarespace
Be informed on how to capture Google Ads data in Squarespace. This way you’re updated on the campaigns generating most of your leads, customers and revenue.
Do you have a hard time determining which of your Google Ads campaigns are creating customers and revenue?
Picture a scenario where you can see where each lead came from, all the way down to the campaign and ad they clicked. If this is available to you, you’d know the campaigns and ads producing customers and revenue, and you’d be able to invest more in these.
In this piece, we’ll teach you how to use Attributer to capture Google Ads data in Squarespace, along with every lead you receive. In the end, you’d also know how to track your Google Ads campaigns’ performance.
Why it's important to track customers and revenue from Google Ads
Let’s imagine you own a business that sells and installs pool equipment. To boost your business, you run ads on Google showcasing the products you offer, like Pool Pumps and Pool Cleaners.
If you’re using a tool like Google Analytics to quantify visitors and form completions, you’d most likely get something like this:
| Spend | $2,000 | $2,000 |
| Visitors | 200 | 100 |
| Goal Completions | 20 | 10 |
Assuming the only information you have access to is “visitors and leads from spend,” the results would tell you that the Pool Pumps campaign is far outperforming the Pool Cleaners campaign, and you’d put more of your budget into the former.
On the other hand, if you could see results all the way down to the number of customers and amount of revenue generated, you’d get results like this:
| Spend | $2,000 | $2,000 |
| Visitors | 200 | 100 |
| Leads | 20 | 10 |
| Customers | 2 | 5 |
| Revenue | $8,000 | $25,000 |
If you can monitor campaign effectiveness down to the numbers of customers and revenue, you can gauge more accurately because you can see the real story.
In this situation, the Pool Cleaners Campaign is doing better because:
- You got more customers from the Pool Cleaners Campaign (5) than the Pool Pumps Campaign (2)
- Your conversion rate from lead to customer is five times higher for the Pool Cleaners Campaign (50% vs. 10%)
- Your average customer value is higher for the Pool Cleaners Campaign: $5,000 per customer vs. $4,000 per customer from the Pool Pumps Campaign.
- Your cost of acquiring a customer is lower through the Pool Cleaners Campaign: $400 vs. $1,000
- Your Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) is three times higher in the Pool Cleaners Campaign
As displayed in the analysis above, you get a better idea and grasp of what’s working and what isn’t when you can capture the source of every lead and track everything down to the customers and revenue.
4 simple steps to capture Google Ads data on Squarespace
Attributer makes it easy to capture Google Ads data on Squarespace. Here's how it works:
1. Add UTM variables to your ads
To begin capturing Google Ads data in Squarespace, you must first add UTM parameters to your campaigns.
UTM parameters are basically extra bits of text that you add to the end of the URL you send to people from your campaigns.
So if the page you want to send someone is attributer.io/integrations/salesforce, then your final URL with UTM parameters may look something like this:
attributer.io/integrations/salesforce?utm_medium=paidsearch&utm_source=google&utm_campaign=brand-campaign
Yes, you may structure your UTM parameters however you want, but the general best practice for Google Ads is as follows:
- UTM Medium = Paid search
- UTM Source = Google
- UTM Campaign = The name of your Google Ads campaign
- UTM Term = The name of the ad group the ad belongs to
- UTM Content = The specific ad
Putting UTM parameters behind your URLs is simple. Plus, there are free tools online that can help you build them.
2. Add hidden fields to your forms
Next thing to do is to add a number of hidden fields to your lead capture forms. These forms are the ones used to collect information from visitors. The hidden fields that need to be added to your forms are:
- Channel
- Channel Drilldown 1
- Channel Drilldown 2
- Channel Drilldown 3
- Landing Page
- Landing Page Group
Squarespace makes it super easy to add hidden fields. You simply must drag and drop a ‘Hidden’ field type into the form. Read further instructions here.
3. Attributer writes Google Ads data into the hidden fields
Once the hidden fields are up and running, Attributer will identify where your visitors are originating from. Every time a visitor submits a form on your site, Attributer populates the hidden fields with the values you put in your UTM parameters.
For instance, if I was a marketer at Dropbox and a person arrived on my site from one of my brand campaigns in paid search, Attributer would fill out the hidden fields like so:
- Channel = Paid search
- Channel Drilldown 1 = Google
- Channel Drildown 2 = Brand campaign
- Channel Drilldown 3 = Free account ad
Aside from the values from the UTM parameters, Attributer would also capture the visitor’s landing page (e.g., dropbox.com/features/cloud-storage) and the first landing page group (e.g., features).
4. Google Ads data is captured on Squarespace
The last thing is once a visitor completes a form, the Google Ads data is captured together with the information the lead put into the form, like their name, company, email, phone, etc.
With this information available, you can do a variety of beneficial things, like:
- Add it to each new lead notification email so you can instantly identify where each lead came from
- Send it to your CRM so the rest of the team can also see where each lead has come from
- Use it to create reports that tell you which Google Ads campaigns are producing leads, customers, and revenue
Why using Attributer is the best way to capture Google Ads data on Squarespace
There are several other ways to place UTM parameters behind your Google Ads and capture the data on Squarespace, but what makes Attributer the best method?
Here’s why:
1. Captures all traffic
Besides being an excellent tool for capturing Google Ads data in Squarespace, Attributer can also monitor all the other sources of leads (Organic Social, Paid Social, Organic Search, etc.)
This means that when you build reports to see where your leads and customers have come from, you can pinpoint the source of ALL your leads, not just the ones from your Google Ads campaigns.
This feature can be very beneficial, especially if your SEO efforts generate most of your leads and customers instead of your Google Ads campaigns. When this happens, you’d want to be informed so you can invest wisely.
2. Attributer remembers the data as visitors browse your site
A lot of other tools and methods for capturing UTM parameters require the UTM parameter to be present on the page where the form is submitted. This becomes a problem when the page a visitor completes a form on isn’t the exact page they initially landed on from your ad.
For example, say someone clicks your Google Ads and is led to a landing page for this campaign. After some deliberation, they decide they want to avail of your product or service, so they click the ‘Get A Quote’ button, which then takes them to a different page to fill out your quote request form. This means that the page they complete a form on differs from where they first landed on your site. Hence, the UTM parameters are lost.
You don’t have to put up with this with Attributer because it keeps the UTM parameters safe in a cookie in the user’s browser, so regardless of the page where the user completes a form on, the UTM parameters will always be sent through.
Ultimately, this means that no matter the user’s navigation activity before submitting a form, you can always track them back to your Google Ads.
3. Provides cleaner data
One common pitfall when using other tools that capture raw UTM parameters is that your data gets messed up, making creating accurate reports an uphill task.
For example, pretend some of your Google Ads campaigns are tagged with UTM_Source= Google.com (capital G), others with UTM_Source= google (lowercase, no domain), and others with UTM_Source= adwords.
Suppose you capture these raw UTM parameters on Squarespace and use them to determine the number of leads you got from your Google Ads campaigns. In that case, you’ll get three different sources that need to be stitched together manually by you.
It works differently with Attributer because it considers the possibility of capitalization and other inconsistencies so that it would appoint the leads, in this case, to the correct channel regardless.
4. Attributer captures landing page data
Do you want to be informed about how many leads and customers your blog and other in-depth content pieces are producing?
Attributer can help make this reality because it captures channel data, the landing page (i.e., attributer.io/blog/capture-utm-parameters), and the landing page category (i.e., /blog).
With this data, you can see how specific sections on your site are performing (e.g., your blog) regarding the generation of leads, customers and revenue.
And since both the landing page and landing page group are captured, you can view your blog’s performance in two ways: as a whole section and as individual blog posts.
Wrap up
If you want to be constantly updated regarding the leads and customers your Google Ads are making, then Attributer can be a great solution.
It captures the UTM parameters behind your Google Ad campaigns, enabling you to build reports on which campaigns your leads and customers have come from.
Moreover, it also provides data on leads that come from other channels. This way, you can know the source of ALL your leads, not just those from Google Ads. In the end, you’ll reach a more informed decision regarding where to invest your resources best to catapult the growth of your business.
Best of all, Attributer’s free to get started. What are you waiting for? Start your free trial today!
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About the Author
Aaron Beashel is the founder of Attributer and has over 15 years of experience in marketing & analytics. He is a recognized expert in the subject and has written articles for leading websites such as Hubspot, Zapier, Search Engine Journal, Buffer, Unbounce & more. Learn more about Aaron here.