ChatBuildUTM codes explained, for people who are not marketers
You posted the link in two places. Which one worked?
You post a link in your newsletter and on Instagram. Two bookings come in. Which one worked?
Without a tag on the link, your statistics cannot tell you — both may appear as "direct", or the newsletter may show up as whatever email app the reader used. A UTM code fixes this, and it is just some text on the end of a URL.
What a UTM code actually is
A UTM code is a label you add to a link so your analytics can group the visits it brings. Nothing is installed and nothing changes on your website; the label travels in the address.
A tagged link looks like this:
https://example.com/booking?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=spring
Everything before the ? is your normal page. Everything after it is the note
to yourself.
The three parameters to use
Google Analytics recognises several parameters, and its own guidance is that you should always use these three:
utm_source— where the link is:newsletter,instagram,partner-siteutm_medium— what kind of channel it is:email,social,cpcutm_campaign— which push it belongs to:spring,opening,blackfriday
There are more — utm_id, utm_term, utm_content — and for a small business
they are usually noise. Three is enough to answer the question you actually
have.
Step by step
- Start with the destination. The page you want people to land on, not your homepage.
- Add
?then the three parameters, joined by&. Lowercase, no spaces — use hyphens instead. - Keep your names consistent.
instagramandInstagramandinstabecome three different sources in your reports, which is how this stops being useful. - Shorten it if it will be visible. A tagged URL is ugly in print or in a bio; a link shortener hides it.
- Check it once. Click your own link, then look for the visit in your statistics under that source.
Keep a list
Write your tagged links in a single document with the date and what you used them for. This is the boring step everyone skips, and six months later it is the difference between a report you can read and a list of labels you no longer recognise.
What it will and will not tell you
It will tell you which channel sent someone, and it is reliable for that.
It will not tell you what someone did before clicking, and it cannot see the visitor who saw your post, remembered you, and searched for your name three days later — which is a common and valuable path that will look like "direct" forever.
Start with one link
Do not tag everything. Tag the next campaign you run — one newsletter, one post — and look at the result a week later.
One answered question is worth more than a tagging scheme you abandon in February.
If the visits are arriving but the enquiries are not, the next thing to look at is what happens on the page. If you have not checked how quickly that page loads, start there.
Sources
- Collect campaign data with custom URLs · Google Analytics Help
Frequently asked
- Do UTM codes need a cookie banner?
- The parameter itself is just text in a URL, but the analytics tool that reads it usually sets storage on the visitor's device, and that is what requires consent. Tag your links freely; gate the measurement.
- Will a tagged link hurt my search ranking?
- Tagged links are for campaign traffic you send yourself, not for pages you want indexed. Keep them out of your sitemap and internal navigation, and use your clean URL as the canonical one.
Sjors Hooijen Builds ChatBuild and writes about getting a business online without turning it into a project. Questions about this article? Email hi@chatbuild.com.