On this page · 6 sections
- Use the quote request, not a page view, as your ad conversion.
- Send the configured price as the conversion value for value-based bidding.
- Carry gclid, fbclid or ttclid from the click through to the request.
- Judge campaigns on won quotes once you have the volume.
The conversion to optimise your Google, Meta and TikTok ads for is the quote request, sent with its value and the click id that brought the visitor. A page view or a generic contact form tells the platforms almost nothing about which clicks become jobs. This guide covers why the quote request is the right event, how value and click ids work, how to judge campaigns on won quotes, and how Meta and TikTok fit in.
Why the quote request is the right conversion event
A visitor who clicks a pergola ad and leaves after reading the page tells you nothing about whether the ad reached the right audience. A visitor who configures their pergola, sees a price, and submits a request has done something meaningfully close to “I want to buy this”. They’ve specified a real product and attached their contact details to it. That’s the event worth feeding back into the ad platform’s optimisation, because it’s the one that correlates with revenue, not just traffic.
Sending value, not just a conversion flag
Most ad platforms let you attach a monetary value to a conversion event, and doing so matters more than it might seem: a flat “conversion happened” signal treats a €3,000 carport request the same as a €15,000 veranda request, and the algorithm can’t tell which keywords or audiences are bringing the higher-value jobs. Sending the configurator’s calculated price as the conversion value lets value-based bidding strategies actually optimise toward expensive, well-specified requests rather than just maximising request count.
Click ids: gclid, fbclid, ttclid
To connect an ad click to the quote request it eventually produces, the click id the ad platform attaches to the landing URL (gclid for Google, fbclid for Meta, ttclid for TikTok) needs to travel with the visitor from the ad click through to the request submission, usually via a cookie set on arrival and attached to the request payload when it’s submitted. Without this, a platform only sees “a conversion happened somewhere on the site,” not “this specific ad click led to this specific request”, which breaks both attribution and automated bidding.
Judging campaigns by won quotes, not form fills
A campaign that generates many quote requests but few won jobs isn’t necessarily a good campaign. It might be attracting browsers who request out of curiosity rather than intent. The metric that actually matters, once you have enough volume to judge by, is won quotes per campaign (or cost per won quote), not requests per campaign. This requires closing the loop: tagging which quote came from which campaign (via the click id and UTM parameters captured at request time), and checking back once quotes are accepted or declined, not just when they’re sent.
| Metric | What it tells you | Risk of over-relying on it |
|---|---|---|
| Clicks / page views | Reach | No signal on buying intent |
| Form fills / page contacts | Some intent | Includes generic enquiries, not specified requests |
| Quote requests (with value) | Specified product + budget signal | Good proxy once volume is sufficient |
| Won quotes | Actual revenue | The real target metric, just slower to accumulate |
Meta and TikTok work the same way
The same logic applies beyond Google: Meta’s conversion API and TikTok’s events API both accept a value and a click id, and both benefit from the same “optimise toward the real conversion, not the page view” discipline. If you’re running pergola or veranda ads on more than one platform, the quote request should be the shared conversion event across all of them, each fed its own click id.
Where this fits
This closes the loop between ad spend and the rest of the funnel described in how to sell pergolas, verandas and carports online. Without it, you’re spending on clicks without ever learning which ones turned into signed jobs. For the UTM and click-id handling itself and how it reaches the quote, see Results; for WhatsApp as another channel that benefits from the same tracking discipline, see WhatsApp for installers. See pricing or apply for a walkthrough.
