Conversion goals are a simple but powerful tool from magnews that allows you to track important actions for your business, such as purchases, and link them to your campaigns and various actions you have taken. Learn more about conversion goals.
Magnews allows you to create two types of conversion goals: client-side and server-side. In this article, we will look at what client-side and server-side mean and when it is appropriate to use one or the other.
Client-side goals
Client-side conversion goals are the most traditional type, used on magnews and elsewhere.
These goals are based on:
- JavaScript tracking scripts to be inserted into the site to monitor users during navigation
- Profiling cookies (first-party) to store useful information, such as visitor and assets
These goals are perfect for tracking any valuable action that occurs within your website or eCommerce.
For these goals to work properly, you need to configure them on your site:
- A general tracking script to be inserted on all pages
- A conversion script at the points where the value action is successfully completed, such as the order confirmation page for a purchase goal.
Learn more about how to configure a client-side conversion goal.
Server-side goals
Server-side goals start from the idea that, in many cases, the data determining conversion is already present in magnews. For example, the history of the orders of a contact for purchases, or the participation in an event for B2B subscriptions.
Thanks to the availability of this data on magnews, provided by a standard connector or via a customised integration (e.g. via API), you can overcome the limitations of client-side tracking and work directly on hard data to calculate conversions and attribution to assets.
To create a server-side conversion goal, you need four basic elements that must be in a data table on magnews:
- The association field that links the contact to the table with the conversions
- The identifier of the conversion, such as the order ID in the case of a purchase
- The date on which the conversion occurred, such as the order date
- The economic value of the conversion, such as the order total.
Once these elements and the periodicity of the calculation have been configured, magnews will automatically retrieve the new events and calculate the conversions and attribution values.
Main differences
Server-side goals offer several advantages over client-side goals, including:
- Greater reliability: server-side tracking is more accurate, based on reliable data
- Easier configuration: they do not require scripts on the site, but are quickly set up on magnews
- Multi-channel: can also track actions outside the web, such as in-store purchases or mobile app activity
- History recovery: you can regenerate all past conversions at any time
- Independent of the visitor's choices: they do not depend on the visitor's acceptance of cookies, as is the case for client-side goals.
However, it is not always possible or convenient to bring structured conversion data to magnews. For example, to track additions to a shopping cart or downloads of a white paper, it may make more sense to use client-side goals.
In general, when possible and when useful data is available on magnews, it is preferable to use server-side goals. In the case of micro-conversions, client-side goals are a good alternative.
Examples of goals
Let us look at some tracking examples for different use cases.
E-commerce
In the most classic cases, the most valuable actions that are interesting to track in your e-commerce are:
- Purchase: as this is the most important action, it is advisable to configure it as a server-side goal, if the order history is available
- Start checkout: this action, although important, is not of great value as structured data on magnews, so it is sufficient to track it as a client-side goal
- Addition to cart: as for start checkout, the client-side type is suggested.
Non-profit
In the non-profit sphere, the most valuable actions that can be tracked and attributed to different campaigns are:
- Donation: server-side, being often the most important action
- Long-distance adoption: server-side, also being a very important action
- Signing petition: server-side, if the data is present on magnews; otherwise client-side.
B2B
In the B2B sphere, the most valuable actions can be traced and attributed to the different actions carried out with magnews:
- Quote request: server-side, being a very important action
- Demo: server-side, if the data is present on magnews; otherwise client-side
- Download: client-side, as it is a simple and easy-to-trace action.