The best way to track Squarespace form submissions as conversions in Google Ads
Track your Squarespace form submissions the right way and capture up to 23% more conversions in Google Ads.
Use Attributer to capture the GCLID and the other Google Ads identifiers with each form submission, then send them back to Google Ads as a conversion. You can fire it when the visitor initially submits the form, or hold off until the lead becomes a paying customer in your CRM.
Google Ads is a great way to bring in new leads and customers for your business, but actually setting up conversion tracking properly is hard.
Tools like Google Tag Manager require you to write custom code to listen for form submissions, then configure triggers, tags, variables, and a whole lot of other complicated stuff on top.
And basic approaches like tracking thank you page visits can result in up to 30% of your conversions being missed, thanks to things like ad blockers, privacy features built into modern browsers (like Safari), and people clicking your ad on their phone but converting later from their laptop.
So what are you supposed to do?
In this article, we'll show you how to set up proper conversion tracking in Google Ads when someone submits a Squarespace form on your website.
Why server side tracking in Google Ads matters
The most common approaches to tracking conversions in Google Ads (like tracking thank you page visits or firing events through Google Tag Manager) have some serious flaws.
In fact, studies show that these methods can result in missing up to 30% of your actual conversions.
This happens for a number of reasons:
- Ad blockers: Ad blockers prevent the Google Tag from loading on your website, which means it can't actually track anything users do once they land on your site.
- Privacy features in browsers: Web browsers like Safari have built in technologies that block the Google Tag from tracking visitors for more than a day or two. So if a person clicks your ad on Monday but comes back on Thursday and actually converts, the conversion couldn't be tied back to the original ad click.
- Using multiple devices: People might click your ad on their work computer but later convert on their home computer (for example), which means the conversion can't be tied back to the original ad click as they happened in different browsers on different devices.
This is why you need to be doing server side tracking. Instead of relying on things to happen in the browser (like the user visiting a thank you page) and hoping the Google Tag can track it, the conversion data is sent directly to Google's servers, which means ad blockers and privacy settings can't get in the way.
This has been proven to work significantly better. Google's own data shows that server side tracking typically results in a 23% average increase in total recorded conversions and a 10% reduction in cost per conversion (With more accurate conversion data, Google's algorithms learn what kind of people convert and which ones don't, and serves your ads more prominently to the kind of people who convert).
How to track Squarespace form submissions in Google Ads using server side conversion tracking
There are two ways to do this, and the choice between them comes down to when you want to send the conversion to Google Ads. Do you want to send it when the visitor submits the form and becomes a lead? Or do you want to do it later in the sales cycle when the lead actually becomes a customer?
Option 1: When a lead submits the form
If you want the conversion to when the visitor submits a Squarespace form on your site, the easiest path is a tool like Converly.
As you can see in the screenshot above, Converly makes it super easy. You simply pick a trigger (like a Squarespace form being submitted on your site) and then pick the action you want to follow it (a conversion sent to Google Ads).
From there, Converly handles all the complexity for you. It automatically detects when a form is submitted, pulls out the user's name, email, phone number, and so on, secures it with SHA-256 (required by Google), and sends it to Google Ads.
On top of that, it also send a heap of other context about the user and how they got to your site (GCLID, GBRAID, WBRAID, IP address, browser, device, and more). This additional data helps Google match the conversion back to the exact campaign, ad, and keyword the lead originally clicked.
The end result is that you get all the benefits of server side tracking (a 23% average lift in total recorded conversions, a 10% reduction in cost per conversion) without any of the complexity of writing custom code to listen for form submissions and extract lead, anonymising it with SHA-256, sending it to Google's API, etc.
Option 2: When a lead becomes a customer
If you collect leads through Squarespace forms and then push them through to a CRM like Salesforce, HubSpot, or Pipedrive, you can also wait until later in the sales cycle (when the lead actually becomes a paying customer, for example) to fire the conversion back to Google Ads.
To so this, you need to capture some extra context with each form submission (like the GCLID, IP address, etc), store it in your CRM, and then send it back to Google Ads when your specific milestone is reached (I.e. the lead becomes a customer).
Here's the full flow:
1. Install Attributer on your website and add a hidden field
First, sign up for a 14 day free trial of Attributer. You'll get a small snippet of code to drop onto your website (in Squarespace, the code goes in Website Tools > Code Injection > Header).
Once that's in place, head into your Squarespace form and add a few hidden fields. The four you need are:
- GCLID
- WBRAID
- GBRAID
- User Agent
To set it up, you simply open your Squarespace form in the editor, add hidden fields, give them the label Attributer expects, then insert a small block of custom code beneath the form to populate the fields. The Attributer help docs give you step by step instructions (with screenshots) and the exact code snippet to use.
2. Attributer writes data into the hidden fields
Once Attributer's code is on your site, it'll start tracking where every visitor is coming from.
When someone clicks one of your Google Ads and lands on your site, Attributer captures everything Google Ads needs for a server side conversion (GCLID, GBRAID, WBRAID, User Agent, and so on) and stores it in the visitor's browser.
Then when that visitor submits one of your Squarespace forms, Attributer writes the data into the hidden fields you set up earlier, and it's captured along with the rest of the form submission.
3. Data is sent to your CRM
Once the data is captured with the form submission, you can send it through to your CRM alongside the lead's name, email, phone number, and any other information they entered into the form.
Squarespace doesn't have any native CRM integrations, but submissions can be pushed straight to most major CRMs (Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, ActiveCampaign, Zoho, etc) via tools like Zapier.
The data then sits on the contact/lead record in your CRM, ready to be used when it's time to fire the conversion back to Google Ads.
4. Send the data to Google Ads
Whenever the lead reaches a meaningful milestone (like a new deal getting created, or the deal being marked as closed), then you can send all the information back to Google Ads to mark a conversion.
The best way to this is using tools like Zapier. It connects to almost any CRM and can be coonfigured to send conversion to Google Ads at whichever point in the sales cycle you've chosen. It also gives you a simple UI for mapping the values Attributer captured (GCLID, GBRAID, WBRAID, User Agent, and so on) back to the right fields on the Google Ads side.
Why sending server side conversions to Google Ads is the best approach
At a high level, server side tracking gives you much more accurate results than client side tracking (which is just a fancier way of saying browser tracking).
With client side tracking, the conversion event is sent to Google via the visitor's browser and you're essentially just hoping it works. Server side tracking sends the conversion event straight to Google's servers, where ad blockers, privacy settings, etc. can't interfere.
Here are the 4 main reasons it's the most effective way to track conversions:
1. Overcomes ad blockers
Common tracking methods (like firing a Google Tag Manager event or relying on the Google Tag to track a thank you page visit) all depend on scripts loading inside the visitor's browser, but ad blockers and privacy focused browsers regularly stop those scripts from running in the first place.
And the share of users running an ad blocker isn't small. Recent estimates put it at over 30% of internet users.
Server side tracking isn't affected by ad blockers. The conversion data is sent straight to Google's servers, where ad blockers can't get in the way, so every lead ends up accurately counted.
2. Bypasses Safari & iOS privacy limitations
Apple's Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) clears tracking cookies after just a couple of days. So if a lead clicks your ad on Monday but doesn't convert until the following Friday, the conversion can't be tied back to the original ad click.
Server side tracking handles this differently. Instead of relying on a cookie to tie everything together, it sends the lead's name, email, phone, Google Click ID, IP address, etc. and Google uses those to match the conversion back to the person who originally clicked the ad.
3. Works across devices
It's pretty common for a lead to first land on your site on one device (their phone, say), do some initial research, but not actually complete the form until later and on another device (like their laptop for instance)
Traditional browser tracking can't connect those two sessions because they happen on different browsers on different devices, but sending identity data (name, email, and so on) directly to Google lets it "stitch" those visits together and credit your ad with the conversion it actually started.
4. Eliminates duplicate and messy data
On top of all the above, browser based tracking is prone to other errors like double counting from page refreshes, missing data due to slow load times, or lost events when the visitor's connection drops mid load.
Tracking from the server is much more precise because it only triggers a conversion when a form is successfully submitted (not just when a thank you page happens to load), so the conversion counts in Google Ads end up matching your real lead numbers in your CRM much more closely.
3 reports you can run when you properly send conversions to Google Ads from Squarespace Forms
Across 15 years of running marketing for various businesses, I've spent millions of dollars in Google Ads and built hundreds of reports trying to figure out which campaigns were actually pulling their weight.
Out of all of them, here are the 3 reports I've found most consistently useful:
1. Conversions by Keyword
Most businesses running Google Ads end up bidding on a fairly broad spread of keywords across multiple campaigns (often broken out by the type of shoot you offer, like a photography studio running a separate engagement shoots campaign and a full weddings campaign).
This report shows you which of those keywords are actually generating conversions, instead of just impressions and clicks that go nowhere.
It helps you understand which keywords are profitable and which ones aren't, so you know where to put more budget for the best return.
2. Conversion Value by Campaign
If you're sending conversions back to Google Ads from your CRM, you can also include the value of each conversion (which would normally be populated from the value of the deal or opportunity attached to the lead in your CRM).
This is important because not all customers are equal. For a photography studio, getting a new client from your 'headshots' campaign is nowhere near as profitable as winning a client from your 'weddings' campaign, so you don't really want to treat them as equals.
If you send a conversion value from your CRM to Google Ads, you can run reports that show you got X revenue from leads that came from this campaign, and Y revenue from leads that came from another. That makes it much easier to decide which campaigns to put your budget behind.
3. Conversions by Geography
This report is especially useful for businesses that earn most of their revenue locally (boutique fitness studios, personal trainers, nutrition coaches, pilates studios, and so on). It breaks your conversions down by geographical region.
You can view the numbers at a high level (country, state, or city), or drill all the way down to a specific postcode. That tells you whether the leads you are getting are actually coming from your target service areas, or whether you're paying for clicks from suburbs too far out for you to profitably serve.
From there, Google's Location Bid Adjustments give you a way to act on it. Tell Google to bid more aggressively in the postcodes that consistently produce paying customers, and pull bids back (or cut them entirely) in the areas that generate clicks but never produce filled out forms.
Wrap up
Sending server side conversions to Google Ads can really move the needle on your campaign results. It gives you the data you need to make manual adjustments (like bidding higher on certain keywords or in certain geographies), and it gives Google's algorithms the data they need to make smarter automated bidding decisions for you.
But it only works well if the conversion data going in is accurate. If you're tracking thank you page visits or firing events in the browser through Google Tag Manager, you're not really sending proper data, and your Google Ads performance will reflect it.
So whether you fire the conversion the second the form is submitted (using Converly) or hold off until the lead becomes a paying customer (using Attributer + your CRM + Zapier), make sure you're sending it server side. That's where the real lift in performance comes from.
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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.