Louis Lazaris has made a ton of Pens, often in support of one of his newsletters Web Tools Weekly. And yet, like a lot of folks, has never really dug into the Editor Settings of CodePen. Here’s a recent newsletter where he finds those settings and digs into them.
I haven’t really messed around too much with CodePen’s settings other than laying out the editor to display the code panels on the left.
Maybe you also use CodePen a lot. If you do, it’s good to know there’s a specific page where you can modify editor-specific settings to suit your own needs and maybe be more in line with what’s in your primary IDE.
Check out the page for yourself and toggle the “Sticky Preview” to “On” to view any changes in real-time.
For now, this Editor Settings area is the one place you can change your editor font and syntax highlighting theme (we have lots of both of them), and do things like set up your preferred defaults.
You know what I think the most important one is?
Format on Save
Having Prettier format your code on each save is a very satisfying experience and I have a hard time coding without it now.
Incident severity levels and priority are invaluable to solving infrastructural problems faster. This blog helps you understand levels of severity and how they can enhance your incident response process.
Major outages are bound to occur in even the most well-maintained infrastructure and systems. Being able to quickly classify the severity level also allows your on-call team to respond more effectively.
“Idea is great, but the app is very poor. UI is not at all user-friendly. I am deleting it right away.”
How disheartening it would be to see such a review on your app, which you made with blood and sweat. It is not a new discovery that a classy and user-friendly UI is necessary to complete your great idea into a successful app. Every developer knew this struggle until 2011, when Facebook first used React for its newsfeed. Or is there something else?
Do you want to know how much revenue you’re generating from Google Ads on your website?
Setting up Google Ads conversion tracking will help you uncover insights about your ad campaign’s performance. You can find out which campaign is performing the best, how users interact with your ads, and how you can improve conversions.
In this article, we’ll show you how to properly set up eCommerce Google Ads conversion tracking in WordPress. This is the exact same method that we use on our own websites.
Why Set Up Google Ads Conversion Tracking in WordPress?
If you’re running Google Ads for your WordPress blog, eCommerce store, or membership site, then it is important to know how they’re performing. You can’t improve, what you can’t measure.
Tracking Google Ads conversions helps you see how much revenue you earned from users who clicked on your ad campaigns. It also helps you see which paid keywords and ad groups drive the most conversions. This way, you can optimize your campaigns and budget for more profitable search terms.
Besides that, Google Ads conversion tracking also uncovers how users behave on your WordPress site after clicking an ad. For instance, you might see a lot of users arrive on a landing page, but abandon it after adding products to the cart.
You can use this information to improve the checkout process, offer discounts and incentives as users are about to leave your site, and provide a better user experience.
That said, let’s see how you can add Google Ads conversion tracking in WordPress.
MonsterInsights offers an Ads addon that lets you setup comprehensive conversion tracking without touching a single line of code or hiring a developer.
We will use the MonsterInsights Pro license for this tutorial because it includes the Ads addon. There is also a MonsterInsights Lite version you can use for free.
First, you’ll need to install and activate the MonsterInsights plugin. If you need help, then please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, you will be redirected to the welcome screen in your WordPress dashboard. Go ahead and click the ‘Launch the Wizard’ button.
Next, you can follow the onscreen instructions to connect Google Analytics to your site. For more details, you can see our guide on how to install Google Analytics in WordPress.
With MonsterInsights, you can also use dual tracking to set up a Google Analytics 4 property. It is the latest analytics version and will soon replace Universal Analytics. You can learn more by following our guide on how to switch to Google Analytics 4 in WordPress.
Once you’ve connected Google Analytics with WordPress, the next step is to install the Ads addon. Simply go to Insights » Addons from your WordPress dashboard and navigate to the ‘Ads’ addon.
Go ahead and click the ‘Install’ button. The addon will now automatically install and activate on your site.
Creating a Conversion Action in Google Ads
Next, you’ll need to create a conversion action in Google Ads.
After that, go ahead and click the ‘Tools and settings’ option at the top. Under the ‘Measurement’ column, simply select the Conversions option.
On the next screen, you’ll need to create a conversion action.
You can click the ‘New conversion action’ button to get started.
Next, Google Ads will ask you to select the type of conversions you want to track. It will show you 4 options, including a website, app, phone call, or import.
For this tutorial, we’ll choose the ‘Website’ option for tracking ad conversions.
After that, you’ll need to enter the website URL where you’d like to measure conversions.
Once that’s done, simply click the ‘Scan’ button.
Google Ads will now show 2 options to create conversion actions, including an automatic and manual method. In the automatic method, you’ll need to select the conversion goal, choose a match type, and enter the URL. This way is suitable if you know which events to count as conversions.
However, we recommend selecting the manual method. Simply scroll down and click the ‘+ Add a conversion action manually’ option.
Next, you’ll need to enter the Conversion action details.
First, you can select the ‘Goal and action optimization’ for your conversion. This is the action you’d like to track. For example, when a user subscribes to your newsletter, makes a purchase, adds a product to a cart, submits a contact form, and more.
For the sake of this tutorial, we will select ‘Subscribe’ as the goal. After that, you can enter the Conversion name.
You can now scroll down and select a Value for your conversion. Google Ads lets you choose the same value for each conversion, assign different values for conversions, or don’t use a value for conversion action.
We will select the ‘Use the same for each conversion’ option, select the currency, and enter a value for this tutorial.
Besides that, you can also choose how many conversions to count per click.
If you’re tracking email newsletter signups, then we recommend selecting the ‘One’ option. This way, each subscriber is counted once. However, you can use the ‘Every’ option in an eCommerce store and count each purchase as a conversion.
After selecting these options, simply click the ‘Done’ button at the bottom.
You can now see your conversion action under the ‘Create conversion actions manually using code’ section.
Go ahead and click the ‘Save and continue’ button to get instructions for adding the tracking tags for conversion action to your site.
On the next screen, you’ll see 3 options to add the conversion action to your site.
Simply select the ‘Use Google Tag Manager’ option. You should see the Conversion ID and Conversion Label. Copy these to a notepad file or keep the browser window/tab open.
To finish the setup process, you’ll need to head to your WordPress website dashboard and view the MonsterInsights settings.
From here, go to Insights » Settings and click on the ‘Publisher’ tab.
After that, you can scroll down to the ‘Ads Tracking’ section.
Go ahead and enter the Conversion ID. Make sure you follow the format, which will look like this: AW-123456789.
That’s it. You’ve successfully set up Google Ads conversion tracking on your WordPress website.
View Google Ads Conversion Tracking Data in Google Analytics
You can take it a step further and connect Google Ads with Google Analytics to get more insights about how people use your website after clicking on an ad.
For instance, you can see the number of visitors from paid search and find out which pages they view after landing on your site. You can also use different filters and create custom reports in Google Analytics.
Let’s see how you can link your Google Ads account with Google Analytics 4 and Universal Analytics.
Connect Google Ads with Google Analytics 4
First, you’ll need to log in to your GA4 account and then go to the ‘Admin’ settings.
After that, you can click the ‘Google Ads Links’ option.
It is located under the Property column.
A new window will now slide in from the right.
Go ahead and click the ‘Link’ button in the top right corner.
Next, you will see different options for Link setup.
First, you can click the ‘Choose Google Ads accounts’ option.
On the next screen, you’ll need to select the Google Ads account you wish to connect.
Once that’s done, simply click the ‘Confirm’ button at the top.
You will now see the Google Ads account that you want to link.
Go ahead and click the ‘Next’ button.
In the next step, Google Analytics will give you options to enable personalized advertising and enable auto-tagging.
You can use the default settings and click the ‘Next’ button.
After that, you’ll see a summary of your Link setup settings.
If everything checks out, then go ahead and click the ‘Submit’ button.
You should now see a ‘Link Created’ notification in front of your Google Ads account. This means that you’ve successfully connected Google Ads with Google Analytics.
Do note that it can take up to 24 hours for your Google Ads data to appear in Analytics reports.
Next, you can view the Google Ads conversion tracking report in Google Analytics 4.
First, you can head to Acquisition » Traffic acquisition from the menu on your left and scroll down to see how many visitors came from the Paid Search channel.
After that, you can go to Acquisition » Acquisition overview and view the Session Google Ads campaign report. This will show which campaign got the most traffic.
You can also click the ‘View Google Ads campaigns’ option at the bottom to view more details.
For each campaign, you can see the total number of users, sessions, number of Google Ads clicks, cost per click (CPC), conversions, and more.
Using the information from this report, you can see which campaigns perform the best.
Connect Google Ads with Universal Analytics
If you’re using Universal Analytics, then you can first log in to your account.
After that, head to the ‘Admin’ settings.
Next, you’ll need to go to the Google Ads Links option.
You can find the option under the Property column.
On the next screen, you’ll need to select the Google Ads account you want to connect.
After selecting your account, simply click the ‘Continue’ button.
Next, you will need to enter a Link group title.
You can then select the Views to link with your Google Ads account. Simply click the toggle to ON for the correct Views.
Once that’s done, simply click the ‘Link accounts’ button.
Google Analytics will now show a summary of your settings. Simply scroll down and click the ‘Done’ button.
That’s it. Your Google Ads account will now be linked to the Universal Analytics property.
To view data from your ad campaigns, head to Acquisition » Google Ads » Campaigns from the menu on your left. You can see the number of clicks, cost, CPC, and more for each campaign.
Final Thoughts on Google Ads Conversion Tracking in WordPress
When it comes to setting up any conversion tracking, the most important thing you want to make sure is that the setup is done properly. This is why we use and recommend MonsterInsights because it just does everything for you behind the scenes without touching any code.
However if you prefer to add code directly on your WordPress site, then you can do that as well by using a plugin like WPCode. This will help future-proof your customizations. There’s a free version of WPCode that you can use by following our tutorial on adding custom code in WordPress.
Happy New Year and welcome to Season 3 of Dev Interrupted!
