A basic error cost me ~20 subscribers

When you're trying to build anything online, measuring conversion goals is very important.

A few weeks ago, I started sharing resources and articles about B2B SaaS growth on a personal site that I spun up for myself.

As part of that, I decided to create a mailing list to give notifications about new videos, posts and resources.

I missed out on a whole bunch of new subscribers after people like Kevin Indig, Arvid Kahl and IH shared my posts on Twitter and in their mailers.

I use:

• Webflow for my site
• Convertkit for my list
• Google Analytics to track conversions.

Convertkit allows you to post new subscriptions from a Webflow form using their API.

Important: You just need to label the form elements correctly.

I don't have a product or service to sell right now. I'm just building my mailing list so I only set up GA goals for:

1. Join Newsletter
2. Confirm address
3. Confirmed

And I let things run while my new site picked up traffic. I’m happy with the traffic for a site that’s less than a month old and only has a few posts at the moment.

People have been sharing my articles all over the place. The video views are increasing too. Generally great.

But I noticed that my subscriber count in Convertkit was just not going up.

"Weird. People like this content. And they're sharing it," I thought. "Let me check Google Analytics to see what's up."

Goals Overview confirms my idea.

Viewed subscribe page – 21
Entered address and viewed confirm subscription – 19
Confirmed address – 1

I only add people to my list when they confirm their subscription so it could have been that.

But then I took a look into Webflow to confirm.

And immediately facepalmed.

My form fields had the wrong names on them. There was no way for my form to connect to ConvertKit.

So. A technical error, sure, but one that cost me a small but significant (for me) number of subscribers.

A few key takeaways:

Regardless of what you're building, set up conversion goals

It's easy to do in Google Analytics (have a video/article coming up soon if you're never done it)

Track your conversion rates

At the start, you can do this by eye – just looking at the conversion goals on Analytics.

Once you get any kind of volume, track it in a spreadsheet. (DM me on Twitter and I'll send you the one that I use.)

Test your 'onboarding' regularly

It's easy to forget but things break all the time.

I'll set a note to check my setup in 48 hours, 7 days and 30 days time.

If you enjoyed this breakdown of how goal measurement in Google Analytics actually matters, and you're interested in B2B SaaS growth, then join my mailing list.

And please... if you don't get a confirmation email, let me know 😂