Bear in mind that in order to properly test your tracking of clicks and conversions (Actions, Engagements, Sales), you need to always follow these 2 steps:
1. Before doing anything, always Delete Test Data first as this guide shows (otherwise it may not track everything you do)...
2. Then you need to visit your landing page via a valid UTM link (example in #3 below). This is what creates the all-important Visitor ID & starts everything to track.
You should always delete your test data - there is no benefit in keeping test data.
2. PROJECTS
Don't be 'Project happy'. In other words, don't create a new Project every time you add a new landing page, affiliate offer, etc. into the mix. In fact, you can use one single Project to house multiple offers you're promoting, even multiple niches (UTM parameters keep your data separated).
One single Project makes viewing your stats so much easier, because you don't have to jump around between various Projects and changing screens all the time to view your data. You really only need to set up a separate Project for special circumstances, like if you're adding a new Shopify store, or adding a new domain for completely unrelated promotions, etc.
3. UTM PARAMETERS
UTM parameters are added to the link to your landing page inside Google Ads. The purpose of UTM parameters is to track variables in your ads/funnel that are important to you to test (such as traffic source, offer, video ad, landing page, targeting, etc).
After you get some traffic, you can then look at your stats and break them down by UTM in order to make data-driven decisions about your ads (whether to pause or scale). The best view to your stats is with the UTM Performance Report .
The first three UTMs (source, medium, campaign) are REQUIRED. If any links don't include these 3 UTMs - and with valid values - then visitors who click on these links will NOT be tracked.
Here is what a typical, valid UTM link looks like:
When you're testing your links and then looking at your stats in ClickMagick for clicks and conversions (Actions, Engagements, Sales), be aware that not all UTMs may appear in the drop down lists.
Only UTMs that have actually received traffic (for the date range you have set on the dashboard) will appear in the drop down lists.
5. DYNAMIC TOKENS
Although not an absolute requirement, it's strongly recommended not to put any dynamic tokens in the 3 required UTMs. What does this mean? It means for utm_source, utm_medium, & utm_campaign, don't use the dynamic tokens feature (a feature where ad networks dynamically replace data in your ad's link, which is done to track things like the keyword that triggered a click in a Search campaign).
The reason to discourage the use of tokens in the 3 required UTMs is it's a sort of safety measure. For example, if the ad network has a hiccup and can't replace the token with a valid value for some reason (it happens), then the link becomes invalid. And anyone clicking an invalid link will not be tracked.