Olark + Unbounce + AdWords: Tracking Chat Sessions as Conversions

If you’re using Olark live chat on your Unbounce landing pages, you know how valuable chat sessions are to your business. They can be a great source of leads and sales.

For example, we’ve seen clients drive a month’s worth of extra leads in just 4 days—simply by adding Olark to their Unbounce landing pages.

But, if you aren’t tracking those chat sessions as conversions, it can be hard to tell how much value you’re really driving with your marketing campaigns.

This is particularly important if you are using Google AdWords. Clicks are expensive on AdWords. You can’t afford to waste money on clicks that don’t produce value.

So, if chats are part of the value you’re trying to drive with your AdWords campaigns, it’s important to know how to track those chats as conversions.

Tracking Olark Chats on Your Site Pages

Olark actually has fairly straightforward documentation on how to track chats in Google Analytics and Google AdWords—when the chats start on your actual website.

Olark and Google Analytics

Tracking Olark chats in Google Analytics is easy. Assuming you have your Google Analytics tracking code on all your site pages, all you have to do is log into Olark, click “Reports” and click on “Google Analytics.”

Then, just check both boxes and hit “Save.”

That’s it! Olark will begin sending your chat data to Google Analytics (note, it will take up to 24-48 hours for the data to start showing up in your account).

You can see your chat data in Google Analytics by clicking Behavior > Events > Top Events and looking at the category “Olark_Chat.”

From there, if you want to track chats in Google Analytics as conversions, all you have to do is set up an event-based conversion goal (just like you would set up any other goal).

Then, if you want to see how many chats your AdWords campaigns are driving, all you have to do is look at your paid search traffic in Google Analytics (check out the Acquisition report). Pick the conversion goal you created for chats and you should be able to see exactly how many chats your paid search campaigns have produced.

Like I said, easy, right?

For more information, check out this blog post and this article on Olark (includes a helpful video).

Olark and Google AdWords

Tracking chats as conversions in Google AdWords takes a little more technical expertise. Ideally, if you have a development resource, the easiest way to get this working is to have them take a look at this article from Olark.

However, if you’re a DIY sort of marketer, here’s what you need to do.

First, create a new conversion in AdWords for your chats. Next, put the following Javascript code under the Olark snippet on a given page:

function trackAdwordsConversion(id, label) {
    var image = new Image(1, 1);
    var base = "http://www.googleadservices.com/pagead/conversion";
    image.src = base + "/" + id + "/?label=" + label + "&script=0";
}

Then, drop the following code in after the previous code on your page (change “YOUR_Conversion_ID” and “YOUR_Conversion_Label” to match the conversion ID and conversion label, respectively, for your new chat conversion in AdWords).

olark("api.chat.onBeginConversation", function(){
    // Make sure to replace the ID and Label with your own ID and labels.
    trackAdwordsConversion("YOUR_Conversion_ID", "YOUR_Conversion_Label");
});

If you’ve put everything together correctly, you should be ready to roll! Anyone who clicks on your paid search ads and starts a chat should be logged as a chat conversion in AdWords.

Tracking Olark Chats on Your Unbounce Pages

Targeted landing pages are the key to effective AdWords campaigns, but if you’re creating landing pages in a landing page platform like Unbounce, tracking chat conversions can be a bit more tricky.

Fortunately, we’ve worked together with Olark and Unbounce to create a solution. Here’s what you need to do:

Step 1. Install the Olark Chat Code

If you already have the Olark chat code installed on your Unbounce landing page, SKIP THIS STEP! Duplicate chat codes will make it impossible to track conversions in AdWords.

However, if you haven’t already added the Olark chat code to your page, click here to find your code. Then, copy the code, open the page you want to add chat functionality to in Unbounce and open the script manager for that page.

Place the Olark code in the head…

…and apply it to the domains you want it to run on. Now Olark chat will appear on the associated pages.

Step 2. Set Up Conversion Tracking

As with tracking AdWords-generated Olark chats on your website, you’ll need to create a custom conversion for chats (if you’ve already done this for chats on your site, you can use the same conversion ID and conversion label for Unbounce chats) before you can track chats on your Unbounce pages.

Once you’ve set that up, copy the following code:

<script>
function trackAdwordsConversion(id, label) {
    var image = new Image(1, 1);
    var base = "http://www.googleadservices.com/pagead/conversion";
    image.src = base + "/" + id + "/?label=" + label + "&script=0";
}
olark("api.chat.onBeginConversation", function(){
    // Make sure to replace the ID and Label with your own ID and labels.
    trackAdwordsConversion("1027428626", "a9RkCJvq_GsQkqL16QM");
});
</script>

Replace the conversion ID and label with your ID and label from AdWords and open the script manager back up in Unbounce.

Create a new script and paste the code before the body end tag:

Apply the script to your desired domains and that’s it! Check up on your AdWords chat conversions in a week or so to make sure that everything is working properly, but you should be good to go.

Conclusion

Live chat sessions are an important source of online leads and sales, but they can be difficult to track in Google Analytics and AdWords. However, by following the steps outlined in this article, tracking this important metric should be fairly straightforward.

By the way, if you’ve tried going through these steps and still can’t figure things out, let me know here or in the comments. I’d love to help!

How valuable do you think live chats are in AdWords campaigns? Do you currently track live chats? Have any other tips or tricks to share?