October 26, 2015

Many financial institutions have taken the necessary steps to provide account opening and loan applications online.

Now they are looking for ways to increase the number of applications and account openings. One of the first steps you can take to better understand customer behavior is to install event tracking on your website. Event tracking is a valuable tool within Google Analytics that allows you to track what people do once they land on your page.

Event tracking can reveal the number of clicks on calls-to-action, such as an “Apply Now” button for a mortgage application or an “Open Now” button for new checking accounts, within specific pages. When you enable event tracking, you're able to not only tell which ad campaign is driving the most traffic to your landing page, you can specifically see which ads are performing the best. For example, on the surface, display ads may be sending the most visitors to your page, but digging deeper into the analytics may reveal that text ads are actually the source of most of your account openings.

Like tracking links, there are several important elements that must be accounted for when it comes to tracking events: the event category, event action and event label. The event category identifies the page that is being tracked. The event action is the action being tracked, which in most cases will be a click on a button. The event label is what the button is called, e.g. “Apply Now.”

It is crucial that your programming department, or that of your agency, ensures event tracking is setup and working properly, due to the complex nature of code integration within your website or campaign landing page(s).