Tracking is essential for PPC success. Strong, accurate conversion tracking allows for optimisations to be made within your Google Ads account. Without strong, reliable tracking, you’re in the dark about the success of your campaigns and quality score, and you’ll be blind to the actual ROI of your marketing.

This guide will show you the steps to setting up conversion tracking for Google Shopping and Performance Max campaigns.

Why is good conversion tracking important?

Installing Google Tag Manager for Google Ads conversion tracking

We recommend using Google Tag Manager (GTM) as we find it to be the easiest way to manage conversion tracking, it’s flexible to your needs, easily scalable and makes it simple to deploy and test tags without the need to adjust the code of your website and reduces the need for support from your web development team.

Why use tag manager?

Create a Google Tag Manager account:

Install GTM Code On Your Website:

When the container is created, GTM provides 2 code snippets to install on your site. One for installation in the section, open for the tag; these should be installed on every page of your website.

This sets the basis for the conversion tracking for your website.

Setting up conversion tracking

There are several ways to set up conversion tracking, including directly through Google Ads, Google Tag Manager or Google Analytics 4 (GA4). The method you choose can be tailored to how your site is built and how comfortable you are with the technical side of your website.

Google Tag Manager

Dynamic conversion values for ecommerce:

Most likely, your ecommerce store will sell products at different prices, producing an infinite number of potential checkout conversion values. For accurate conversion tracking, you will want to pass dynamic transaction values via the tag.

Add a Data Layer Variable for the transaction value data layer of your site's checkout

In your Google Ads tag, enable the value field and use the transaction value variable

Google Ads:

Google Analytics 4 (GA4):

Firstly, ensure that the GA4 property you intend to connect to is linked to your Google Ads account (Admin > Product Links > Google Ads)