API and Optimising our online and offline tracking

[Greg Robson]

Hi,

I've been reading up as much as possible on the API over the last week and I think I've hit the point where I need to get some confirmation from people who know more than I do!

Firstly, our setup.

We're a standard ecommerce site: payments can be made online or offline via our sales team. We have lead forms on the website and certain actions like abandoned carts and failed online payments are picked up as leads by the sales team.

We have tracking set up AdWords, but we know we're missing some enhancement data and wbraid traffic for a start. We do currently capture GCLIDs through all our forms/checkout processes to feed into the CRM.

The Challenge

I'm looking to tweak and optimise for each conversion goal (largely by making sure as many as possible are "enhanced"). Implementation isn't an issue (I've got a PHP app to bridge between our CRM and Google's API), the problem is mostly understanding which of the APIs endpoints is most appropriate to use.

Online Purchases

I currently have a conversion on the checkout success/thank page (source: website, status: enhanced) for completed payments

Is this the best solution? If the tag doesn't fire (is blocked/fails) then I'm going to under-track this. Therefore I plan to have a secondary goal that uses the CRM as a the source and pass through conversions into AdWords via API for comparison...

Question 1) Is this best best option for doing this? I can upload a conversion, upload an adjustment, upload and enhancement and upload with identifiers! Which operation or combination of operations will give the best result [assume that I have the GCLID, user agent and any other tracking data to hand]. 

Online Lead > Offline Purchase (Completion)

For all our web form leads, abandoned carts, failed online payments our sales team will look to get the purchase completed offline. Currently I believe we should:

1. Use Submit Lead Form (SLF) for the website with Enhanced Conversions turned on (all of these leads have a compulsory email address field so we can enhance these via the tag).
2. Use Qualified Lead (QL) when the sales team contact the lead.
3. Use Converted Lead (CL) when the sales team complete a purchase.

QL/CL use the other enhancement methods, but I'm unsure what the most appropriate methods are for maximum attribution/data.

I'm then struggling to understand the next steps based on these endpoints:
https://developers.google.com/google-ads/api/samples/upload-offline-conversion

https://developers.google.com/google-ads/api/samples/upload-conversion-with-identifiers

https://developers.google.com/google-ads/api/samples/upload-conversion-enhancement

https://developers.google.com/google-ads/api/samples/upload-conversion-adjustment

Question 2) Similar to question 1... 

Do I upload with identifiers?
Do I upload the offline conversion and then enhance it?

Do I upload the offline conversion and then adjust it?

Something other combination of the above?

Question 3) Taking a lead source such as "Submit enquiry form" as an example. If we receive a lead and generate revenue from it I assume I should report revenue gained to each of the SLF, QL and CL goals and then Google Ads will sort out the attribution? I don't quite see how Google can connect the Lead Form submission and QL/CL... but I guess that's part of Google's magic! ;-)

Many thanks for your advice in advance, I hope this is clear enough for some guidance. I'll get back to any questions you may have asap. :) 

(Phone calls I'm saving for another day - I think that's an easier one for me to sort out.)

[Google Ads API and AdWords API Forum]

Re-posting the last inquiry (https://groups.google.com/g/adwords-api/c/YBn-Ppjc528) from the forum as it wasn't routed to our support queue.

Regards,
Google Ads API Team

[Greg Robson]

I might have worked this out (after many hours). See my post here.

https://groups.google.com/g/adwords-api/c/SDyRhokC9AA/m/EYnAY70vAAAJ

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor]

Hi,

Thank you for raising your concern to the Google Ads API team.

Allow me to address your concerns below:

1.) For Question 1:

• Please note that if you provide gclid and user_identifiers for a conversion, Google Ads will ignore the user_identifiers.
• You may use this sample code - https://developers.google.com/google-ads/api/samples/upload-conversion-with-identifiers

2.) For Question 2:

• Do I upload with identifiers? - use this for Upload Enhanced Conversions For Leads https://developers.google.com/google-ads/api/docs/conversions/upload-identifiers
• Do I upload the offline conversion and then enhance it? - Refer here for more information https://developers.google.com/google-ads/api/docs/conversions/enhance-conversions#enhanced_conversion_as_a_conversion_adjustment
• Do I upload the offline conversion and then adjust it? - used to adjust already uploaded conversion https://developers.google.com/google-ads/api/docs/conversions/upload-adjustments
• You can combine any of these depending on your need

3.) For Question 3:

• For more information on this, it would be the Google Ads Product support team that can provide further insight. You can reach them here: https://support.google.com/google-ads/gethelp

Let me know if you have any questions or if I misunderstood any of your concern, feel free to elaborate.
 

This message is in relation to case "ref:_00D1U1174p._5004Q2mVfNq:ref"

Thanks,
 

Google Ads API Team