Internet marketing is impossible without website tracking, as it provides the needed information for planning advertising campaigns and moving your business forward. If you do not know what your customers are interested in and at what stage of the funnel they change their minds, you won’t be able to organize your work in a proper way to achieve good results.

However, just having tracking in place is not enough to jump over the head and become not better but the best. Proper optimization of the tracking strategy is essential for getting accurate and ready-to-use data that can impact all your marketing and sales efforts directly. How to do that? It is our task to find out now!

Implement server-side tracking

Server-side tracking is a must-have tool for everyone who wants to be on the same level as the competitors and maintain accurate tracking data. It quite actively pushes out the client-side tracking model, which relies on running tracking scripts in the client’s browser. Instead, this responsibility is moved to the server, where all the data is preprocessed and prepared to be sent to analytical platforms in compliance with privacy regulations. Talking about the applied benefits, we can highlight 3 main ones. 

1. Less affected by ad blockers. Browser add-ons people install to remove advertisements also block tracking scripts, which influences the integrity of the received data. Server-side tracking has different methods that allow for minimizing their effect. 

2. Improved data accuracy. The latest versions of the browsers have tools aimed at boosting users’ privacy, but the side effect is that they do not allow tracking scripts to execute fully. Server-side tracking solves this problem by moving most tasks from the client’s machine to the server.

3. Better compliance. By doing most of the tracking on the server side, you can limit personal data from being shared with the analytical platforms, which makes you more compliant with the privacy policies.

Many server-side tracking solutions, like Facebook CAPI or TikTok Events API, allow you to get even more from the technology, so do not hesitate to improve the system after you set it up.

Focus on the crucial data

We have already mentioned the older and more standard tracking model on the client's side. A problem it has, in addition to data accuracy, is data overload. It tracks all the events, which makes it more challenging to extract and analyze the needed data. The key to effective website tracking is focusing on the right actions and events that support your business goals. Here are some examples of the events you should pay more attention to.

1. Conversions. You need to know when users complete the needed actions - purchases, form submissions, newsletter sign-ups, etc.

2. Customer journey events. Track the key steps in the users’ journey — from viewing products or services to completing a purchase. These events help you optimize your sales funnel, personalize experiences, and run more effective retargeting campaigns.

3. Engagement metrics. Observe how users interact with your key content: blog posts, videos, and CTAs to understand better what type of content your customers prefer.

Do not rely on random things. It is never a good idea to analyze every single interaction, hoping you are lucky enough to catch something important. It is better to focus on the crucial things from the very beginning.

Audit and optimize your tracking setup

As with any IT-related system, your tracking setup becomes cluttered with old tags and outdated events over time. This leads to the page loading slower, the data received not being so accurate, and overall performance going down. To avoid this, you must keep your tracking setup clean.

1. Audit your tracking setup regularly. It is recommended to do so at least once every 3 months. Remove all the old or irrelevant tags and events that do not correspond to your goals.

2. Test the events you create. You need to ensure that all the events you create, including the custom ones, operate correctly. Do not hesitate to use tools like Google Tag Assistant and Facebook Pixel Helper to identify any issues you might have.

3. Optimize your website speed. You need to remove tracking scripts that slow your site down. The fewer scripts load when it is opened, the better your website will operate.

Regular inspections will help you ensure that your tracking setup is working properly and there are no issues on the line.

Conclusion

Having an optimized tracking strategy is essential for your business to grow with accurate and relevant data. Server-side tracking will allow you to focus on the relevant for your business events, ensure data privacy compliance, and improve the quality of the tracked data. Spend some time establishing a proper audit of your website to improve customer experience by improving load and operation speed. This will help you to attract even more people to your business. The final recommendation from us is to keep an eye on the ground in terms of new trends and tools that may help you optimize your tracking setup and get even more from it.