The best way to track Webflow form submissions as conversions in Google Ads
Track your Webflow 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 in Webflow forms, then send them back to Google Ads as a conversion. You can fire it the moment the form is submitted, 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 setting up conversion tracking can be difficult. 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 simpler 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 (looking at you, Safari), and people clicking your ad on one device but actually filling out your website form on another.
So what are you supposed to do?
In this article, we'll show you some simple ways to setup conversion tracking in Google Ads whenever someone submits a Webflow form on your site. The approach we'll use is known as server-side tracking (or Enhanced Conversions as Google Ads likes to call it).
Why server side tracking in Google Ads matters
Common approaches to tracking conversions in Google Ads, such as 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 firing on your website, which means it can't track anything users do once they're on your site (like submitting a Webflow form).
- 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 but doesn't actually complete your form until a week later, it won't be tracked.
- Using multiple devices: People might click your ad on one device (i.e. their work computer) but not convert until later on their home computer (or on their mobile device), which means their original ad click can't be tied to their later conversion.
This is why you need to be doing server side tracking. Instead of relying on things to happen in the browser and hoping the Google Tag can track it, conversions are 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 (because more accurate conversion data allows Google to understand what type of people convert, and they can target them more directly).
How to track Webflow form submissions in Google Ads using server side conversion tracking
There are two ways to do this, and it really comes down to when you actually want to consider a lead 'converted'. Do you want to send the conversion back to Google Ads when they submit a form on your site? Or later in the sales cycle when the lead actually becomes a customer?
Option 1: When a lead submits the form
If you just want to send the conversion to Google Ads when someone submits a form on your website, the easiest path is a tool like Converly. It's purpose built for sending server side conversions to Google Ads, and works perfectly with Webflow forms.
Without it, you'd be writing custom JavaScript inside Google Tag Manager to listen for the submit event, digging the lead's contact details out of the form, hashing them with SHA-256, then posting the result to Google's API (all of which would require a web developer).
But Converly makes this whole process simple. You pick a trigger (a Webflow submission on your site, in this case) and pick the action you want to follow it (a conversion sent to Google Ads).
Converly will then listen for Webflow form submissions on your site, pulls out the user's name, email, phone number, and so on, secure it with SHA-256 (which is a required step by Google), and then send it all over to Google Ads as a conversion. It even captures a heap of other context about the user and how they got to your site (like the Google Click ID, UTM parameters, GBRAID, WBRAID, User Agent, and more) and sends it to Google Ads with the conversion (the more information you can give to Google Ads, the better Google's odds of matching the conversion back to the exact campaign, ad, and keyword the lead originally clicked.
At the end of the day, you get all the benefits of server side tracking (a 23% average lift in total recorded conversions and a 10% reduction in cost per conversion) without ever needing to write custom code (or hire a web developer to).
Option 2: When a lead becomes a customer
If you collect leads through Webflow 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 send the conversion back to Google Ads.
This works by capturing some extra context with each form submission, sending it through to your CRM, and then triggering a conversion when the right milestone is reached. 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 Webflow, the code goes in Project Settings > Custom Code > Head Code.
Once that's in place, open the Webflow form you use to capture leads and add a few hidden fields. The four you need are:
- GCLID
- WBRAID
- GBRAID
- User Agent
Webflow forms doesn't ship a dedicated Hidden Field element, so instead what you need to do is add a code block to the bottom of your form and then copy paste some code into the code block. Full step-by-step instructions (including the code to be copied and pasted) can be seen in Attributer's help docs.
2. Attributer writes data into the hidden fields
Once Attributer's code is on your site, it'll start tracking where your website visitors are coming from.
So when someone clicks one of your Google Ads and lands on your site, Attributer will capture everything Google Ads needs for a server side conversion (like the Google CLick ID, GBRAID, WBRAID, User Agent, and so on) and stores it.
Then, when that visitor completes one of your Webflow forms, Attributer writes the data into the hidden fields you set up earlier, and it's captured with 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. Webflow forms doesn't ship with a deep native CRM integration, but submissions can be pushed straight to most major CRMs (Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, ActiveCampaign, Zoho, and the rest) via tools like Zapier or Make.
Once done, 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 in your sales process (like a new deal getting created or an opportunity being marked closed won), then that's when you fire all the captured data back to Google Ads as a conversion.
Zapier and Make handle this part of the flow nicely. Both connect to almost any CRM, and you can configure them to trigger the Google Ads conversion when virtually anything happens in your CRM (like a deal being created). They also give you a clean visual mapping screen for matching the values Attributer captured (GCLID, GBRAID, WBRAID, User Agent, and so on) back to the right fields in Google Ads.
Why sending server side conversions to Google Ads is the best approach
Server-side conversion tracking ultimately means you have significantly more accurate conversion tracking. And there are a whole lot of benefits to that:
1. More accurate reporting
With accurate conversion data flowing in, your Google Ads reports show you more than just impressions and clicks. You can see how many conversions each campaign drove, the conversion rate, your cost per conversion, return on ad spend, and a long list of other metrics.
You can also slice those numbers by campaign, ad group, keyword, individual ad, country, and plenty of other dimensions.
That gives you a much sharper view of how your Google Ads are actually performing and where the real growth opportunities are sitting.
2. Better automated bidding
With manual bidding, you are essentially telling Google "I'm willing to pay $3 a click". But with smart bidding, you can tell Google your real business goal (say, a $45 cost per lead) and then Google's machine learning algorithms will handle the bidding for you.
It will take into account everything it knows about the person searching (age, location, device, purchase history, and more) and decides whether to bid high or low based on how likely it thinks they are to convert.
It's a great way to get more leads at a lower cost, but the whole system only works if your conversion data is reliable. Without it, Google has no way of knowing what a "good" searcher looks like for you, and tends to bid aggressively on the wrong people (which eats through your ad budget and drives costs up).
Server-side tracking makes Google's smart bidding technologies work properly for you. It sends accurate conversion data to Google so that their machine-learning algorithms can truly understand what a good lead looks like for you, and enables you to use all of their advanced AI technology to get more leads at a lower cost.
3. Better retargeting
When Google Ads is receiving accurate conversion data, you can also build remarketing lists made up of people who landed on your site but didn't convert. From there, you can re-engage those people in a few different ways:
- Search: You can bid higher (or lower if it makes sense) on those people the next time they search for your keywords.
- Display: You can run Display Network campaigns aimed only at this audience, keeping your brand in front of them as they browse the web.
- YouTube: You can serve YouTube Ads exclusively to these people, so your videos pop up whenever they're watching content on YouTube.
3 reports you can run when you properly send conversions to Google Ads from Webflow 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 driving real business results for us (I.e. leads and customers).
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. It's often broken out by the services they offer, like an accounting firm running a 'tax return preparation' campaign as well as a 'small business accounting' 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. Continuing the accounting firm example from earlier, getting a new client from your 'tax return preparation' campaign is nowhere near as profitable as winning a client from your 'small business accountant' campaign, so you don't really want to treat them as equals.
But if you send a conversion value from your CRM to Google Ads, then you'll be able to see how much revenue you've got from each campaign right there in Google Ads (alongside other useful metrics like the cost per conversion, return on ad spend, etc).
This makes it much easier to decide which campaigns to put your budget behind (you can literally see in one screen which campaigns are profitable and which ones aren't).
3. Conversions by Geography
This report is especially useful for businesses that earn most of their revenue locally (painters, tree services, gutter cleaners, pressure washing companies, 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 you are actually getting leads from the areas you serve, or whether you're accidentally paying for clicks from people who are too far away.
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 don't make sense to advertise your services.
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 you'll struggle to get good ROI from your Google Ads campaigns as a result.
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.