Putting a chat widget on your website like Drift or Tawk has become pretty common these days as a way to try and get website visitors to engage with you or your staff without needing to submit a form. Ironically enough, most chat widgets end up just being another form the visitor has to fill outwhen there is nobody on the other side of the chat ready to engage with the visitor and answer their questions. I know there are smarter chat widgets out these days that incorporate AI to assist the visitor if there is not a live human agent available to chat.

So is having a chat on your website a good idea? And should you track it as a Google Ad Conversion? That's what we're going to talk more about today in this blog post.

If you have an ecommerce site, then I'd say it's not really necessary to track it as a Google Ad Conversion since your primary focus will be to generate sales conversions. It wouldn't hurt to track it in Google Analytics however.

If you don't have an ecommerce site and your site's focused on generating leads then I'd actually just recommend ditching the chat. Why? Because it's very difficult to track offline conversions from leads coming from your chat. This is because the script provided by Google that allows you to capture the gclid in the query string and input it into a form's hidden field won't work with a chat form. I have come across this thread regarding Hubspots chat explaining how it may be possible to capture the gclid but I haven't tested out this solution since I've never used Hubspots chat widget.

Enhanced Conversions for Leads also doesn't work with a chat form.

Removing the chat widget from your site also helps with site performance since it's just one more script that doesn't have to be loaded by website visitors when they come to your website. Improved site performance can only help with conversions.