What Your Click Tracking Script Should Tell You?

What Your Click Tracking Script Should Tell You?

by: Radhika Venkata

You run an ad spending $100.00. How could you possibly know how many people bought your product? If you don’t know your ROI on that particular campaign, how will you spend another $100.00 on it?

Simple is You have to track your advertising campaign. This is done by

By keeping specific URL in that specific campaign

Ex: http://www.yourdomain.com/ezinead.html

By giving ก?source=campaign1ก tag to your URL

Ex: http://www.yourdomain.com/product.html?source=ezinead

By using a Click tracking script

http://www.scripts4webmasters.com/clicktracking/index.shtml

Click tracking script is a cgi script that gives you information about a click. The click may be on your website, emails, ezines, banners or anything.

If the click tracking script tells you the number of clicks it is not going to be useful to you. Because you can’t differentiate the people buying through your campaign links or your regular links.

So what a Click tracking script should tell you?

1. Tell the number of clicks to tell the click thru ratio:

By this you can optimize your ads. If a specified ad get low click thrus you can change the optimize it.

2. Tell the ip address of the visitor:

By this you can know which ad bringing you the sales. If a particular ip clicking on a specific link buys your product you can know that ad campaignกs ROI.

3. Tells the geographical distribution of the clicks:

This is useful when you want to know how many clicks coming from different countries. Like if you see กjpก with ip address, you can know the visitor from Japan. But this is not possible in all cases.

4. Tell the date and time of clicks:

Some online enterpreneurs are more interested in sending promotional emails in the weekends. But I guess it is subject to their personal experiences. If you know that particular campaign gets lot of clicks in certain days, you can concentrate showing ads at that particular time.

5. Referers:

You can know that which link exchange program or banner ad on web sites bring you the most clicks.

6. Clicks by time and date:

You are able to get the results by time and date. Like your click tracking script must provide daily stats seperately. This is useful to see which day you sales page gets most clicks.

About The Author

Radhika Venkata

Subscribe to กiNet Marketing Ezineก which is completely focused on Internet Marketing. Receive FREE Ebooks with Resale rights!

http://www.webmasterscentral.com/subscribe.shtml

FREE Ecourse :: 30 days Solid work out to increase your online profits!

http://www.ebooksworld.com/ecourse/index.shtml

This article was posted on March 04, 2004

by Radhika Venkata

The Biggest Problem With Your Marketing Is…?

The Biggest Problem With Your Marketing Is…?

by: Karen Fegarty

What is the biggest problem most marketers have? Who knows. We don’t, and they certainly don’t either. That is exactly the problem. Most marketers don’t know whether or not their campaigns are working because they don’t know how to track the results.

I can’t count the number of people I know who create a marketing campaign and spend hundreds or thousands of dollars implementing it, then don’t even bother to track the results. How will you ever know if, when, and why your marketing is successful, or unsuccessful, if you don’t see hard data on your results?

With online marketing, itกs easy to find out where and when your marketing dollars are being wasted. Using online tracking you can:

Track how many people respond to your online ads If people don’t respond, then you can simply alter your ad and try again.

Track when people respond to your ads Do they respond immediately or do they wait a week? This helps you to determine a time frame for sales activity.

Track whether people are opening your email marketing or bulk email messages If they aren’t, maybe you need to change your subject line or find a new list of people to email.

Determine which ad copy or text brings the best results The right words make all the difference in advertising. Online tracking helps you determine which words will pull sales.

Monitor the click activity on your site What you really need to know are the number of unique visitors you receive. A unique visitor is each individual visitor who clicks on your site, regardless of the number of times they click on your site. The number of clicks you receive is less important than the number of unique visitors you receive.

Online tracking can tell you all this and more. Whatever online marketing you use, from banners to popunders, ebooks to articles, make sure you know what works and what doesn’t. Use online tracking and save yourself money, time and energy.

By Karen Fegarty

http://www.eztrackz.com

About The Author

Karen Fegarty [email protected] is the CEO of MailWorkZ/ezTrackZ, an emarketing technology company focused on developing and marketing leading email marketing and tracking tools. TRACK YOUR RESULTS in a variety situations with ezTrackZ. Don’t waste money on ineffective marketing. Visit http://www.eztrackz.com. Reach Karen at [email protected] or 902.835.5009.

This article was posted on October 15, 2004

by Karen Fegarty

The Wrong Email Format Can Destroy Your Offer

The Wrong Email Format Can Destroy Your Offer

by: Rich Hamilton, Jr

Which email format is more effective to use, Text or HTML?

A good question, many experts have been debating over for awhile now, is which email format is more effective. It all depends on who you ask, many people prefer the text format over the HTML format. There are also many people who would rather use HTML over the text format. You can pretty much draw a line right down the middle between the text users and the HTML users, itกs that close.

The truth of the matter is that the most effective format to use for your email really depends on the offer you’re presenting.

Both text and HTML email formats have their advantages and disadvantages. In this article I am going to go over the advantages and disadvantages of text and HTML email formats. Letกs jump right in and start with the format text.

Text

Obviously the real advantage to using a text format is that you have a white background with black font making it very easy to read. The text format loads fast, no matter what size the email is.

If the email loads fast and is easy to read how can text formats have a disadvantage?

Easy!

The real disadvantage of using text format is when you are using email as a source of marketing. To effectively use email marketing you need to use some sort of tracking software. Without tracking you will never know if the subject line and/or email offer needs work.

The point I am trying to make is that people are very cautious about clicking on tracking and affiliate links. As soon as they see a lengthy url, they get the impression that you are trying to sell them something and immediately delete the email. With a text formatted email you cannot hide long tracking urls from the recipient. With an HTML format you won’t run into this problem, which brings us to…

HTML

The biggest advantage of using HTML is that you can hide your tracking urls from the viewer. Instead of having a long url in your email offer, you can use a simple กclick hereก. Not only can you hide your tracking url, but you can also mask it from appearing in the browser window.

Moreover, HTML has a lot of disadvantages. For instance, some people can’t view HTML email, while others can view it with a limited amount of space. HTML email files can be sizable and take up a lot of space. Most people who use HTML formatted email use a lot of images and other graphics to make their email have a professional appearence. But they don’t stop and think about the size of the email that they are sending, and whether or not their recipients may have limited space.

Sending large email files is a sure way to get your recipients upset. You don’t want to strike out before you have the chance to swing!

You can see that both email formats have their advantages, as well as their disadvantages. As for which format is the right one for you, it all depends on your offer.

If you are sending an email offer that doesn’t require any lengthy tracking urls or has no affiliate urls, then text should be your format of choice.

Moreover, if you do have tracking or affiliate urls in your email offer, then HTML is the way to go. When using an HTML format be conservative, not everyone has broadband, youกll find that a lot of people are still using 28.8k modems for their Internet connection.

When sending out an HTML email offer it should have a solid white background with black text, and absolutely no images or graphics. This way the email offer appears to be text and loads fast, when itกs actually HTML. Your viewer won’t be able to see your long tracking or affiliate url which will increase your click through ratio and that means more sales.

Most autoresponders and email softwares have the ability to send email in both formats, but not all of them. There are still some that don’t.

Rich Hamilton, Jr is the CEO/President of www.ElitesMarketing.com a.k.a. Elites Marketing, Inc and the Author of: กInside Internet Marketingก http://www.InsideNetMarketing.com

About The Author

Rich Hamilton, Jr is the CEO/President of www.ElitesMarketing.com a.k.a. Elites Marketing, Inc and the Author of: กInside Internet Marketingก www.InsideNetMarketing.com.

This article was posted on August 03, 2003

by Rich Hamilton, Jr

Keep Your Investment Safe With Vehicle Tracking

Keep Your Investment Safe With Vehicle Tracking

by: Joe Gooden

A vehicle is one of the larger investments that you will ever make. With all of the work that you do to get the vehicle, you may want to consider getting a vehicle tracking device. You want to be able to get the vehicle you want with out having to worry about it being stolen.

A vehicle purchase should not be made based on the reported statistics of whether it will get stolen from you. With all of the vehicles being stolen these days it is nice to know that GPS is one of the newest crazes on the market today and will keep your expensive asset secure. GPS is now available in almost everything from cell phones to cars.

The most common use of GPS is to get directions to an address or find your way back when you are lost. Vehicle tracking can also help track your vehicles exact location even if the occupant has no idea. You can use GPS tracking to track some ones location while they are unaware the vehicle is linked to a GPS System. The #1 Vehicle Tracker is the Spy Matrix GPS device. This can be used as a theft deterrent system to help companies or people recover their stolen vehicles.

GPS tracking is also a new tool used to track vehicles when someone is just driving their own car. Vehicle tracking devices are available in different price levels to get the job done. Several kinds of vehicle tracking products are available at www.spyassociates.com. This website also offers many different products that will meet all of your spy and surveillance needs such as cameras, listening devices. There is a wide variety of products to help get the job done right and prove the case.

© 2005 Copyright www.spyassociates.com.

About The Author

Joe Gooden

To learn more about Spy and Surveillance Products visit http://www.spyassociates.com. Read other related articles at http://spyassociates.blogspot.com/.

This article was posted on September 08

by Joe Gooden

Not Tracking Your Clicks? You’re Competition is..

Not Tracking Your Clicks? You’re Competition is…

by: Andrew Murray

In this article we will discuss the importance web site tracking and explain to you why it is so important to pay attention your current web traffic.

Understanding what your visitors do on your site is crucial information, not to mention interesting.

For example, I continuously track what happens once my prospects hit my Emerald Passport site http://www.joinemeraldpassport.com since it makes me $1000 per sale.

Knowing what my prospects do gives me a better idea as to where I need to improve and whether my advertising campaigns are cost effective.

If your visitors proceed to purchase a product but then a large majority leave the site when they get to a specific page in the order process then you need to know about it. It could be that this page is confusing or hard to use. Fixing it could increase your sales by 200%.

This is just an example; there are many reasons why you want a detailed analysis of your site visitors.

Most website hosting services offer a stats package that you can study. If you’re not sure where this is, call up your hosting service and ask them. Statistics are a vital part of tracking your marketing progress. If you don’t have access to website statistics get a package that can help you in this area. Do not get a counter that just shows how many visitors youกve had. Youกll be missing out on vital information that can help strengthen weaknesses in your site.

A good website hosting service would offer traffic logs that provide an invaluable insight into the traffic being referred to a web site from various sources such as search engines, directories and other links.

Unfortunately traffic tracking provided by web hosting services is often in the form of raw traffic log files or other difficult to understand cryptic formats. These log files are basically text files that describe actions on the site. It is literally impossible to use the raw log files to understand what your visitors are doing. If you do not have the patience to go through these huge traffic logs, opting for a trafficlogging package would be a good idea.

Basically two options are available to you and these are: using a log analysis package or subscribing to a remotely hosted traffic logging service. A remotely hosted traffic logging service may be easy to use and is generally the cheaper option of the two. WebTrends Live and HitsLink are two good, remotely hosted, trafficmonitoring services worth considering. However, WebTrends Live is a more complicated system and is suitable for larger ecommerce websites. ขSuperStatsข is another recommended traffic logging service.

These services do not use your log files. Typically a small section of code is placed on any page you want to track. When the page is viewed, information is stored on the remote server and available in real time to view in charts and tables form.

Log analysis packages are typically expensive to buy and complex to set up. Apart from commercial packages there are also some free log analysis packages available, such as Analog.

************************************************************

A good traffic logging service would provide statistics pertaining to the following:

************************************************************

* How many people visit your site? * Where are they from? * How are visitors finding your site? * What traffic is coming from search engines, links from other sites, and other sources? * What keyword search phrases are they using to find your site? * What pages are frequented the most what information are visitors most interested in? * How do visitors navigate within your web site?

Knowing the answers to these and other fundamental questions is essential for making informed decisions that maximize the return on investment (ROI) of your web site investment.

The most important aspect of tracking visitors to your website is analyzing all the statistics you get from your tracking software. The three main statistics that will show your overall progress are hits, visitors and page views. Hits are tracked when any picture or page loads from your server on to a visitor’s browser. Hits, however, can be very misleading. It is quite an irrelevant statistic for your website.

The statistic that is probably the most important for a website is Page Views/Visitors. This gives you a good indication of two things.

First, how many people are coming to your site, and secondly how long are they staying on your site. If you have 250 visitors and 300 page views you can figure that most visitors view one page on your site and then leave.

Generally, if you’re not getting 2 page views per visitor then you should consider upgrading your siteกs content so your visitors will stay around longer.

If you see the number of visitors you have increasing as well as the number of page views per visitor increasing then keep up the good work! Always look for this stat as an overall barometer of how your site design is going and if your marketing campaigns are taking hold.

Also, a good stat to look for is unique visitors. Once a person visits your site they will not be added to the unique visitors’ category if they visit again. This is a good way to track new visitors to your website. Page views are a good indication of how กstickyก your website is.

A good statistic to keep is Page Views divided by the number of Visitors you have. This statistic will give you a good idea if your content is interesting and if your visitors are staying on your site for a long time and surfing.

Some people are intimidated by web traffic statistics (mostly because of the sheer volume of data available), but they shouldn’t be. While there are many highly specialized statistics that can be used for more indepth web traffic analysis, the above areas alone can provide invaluable information on your visitors and your website performance. Remember this data is available for a reason. Itกs up to you to use it.

About The Author

Andrew Murray is a top 10 Director with Emerald Passport and

Profit Masters Team. In 9 months, he has made 105,000 using

his unique marketing system. To learn more about his amazing

system visit http://www.JoinEmeraldPassport.com.

This article was posted on September 08

by Andrew Murray

What is Location Tracking?

What is Location Tracking?

by: Joe Gooden

What is Location Tracking?

Location tracking is becoming easier to do. Before, investigators had to talk to people to find out where someone was. This took many hours with little chance for success. Today location tracking is much easier with the innovation of GPS products. This new technology has made it much easier to locate the missing.

GPS works by satellite to track the position and determines where the GPS receiver is. The hope is that the person that it lost has a GPS receiver on them so their location can be tracked. This may sound like a rare thing that only happens in the movies, when they are able to track someone’s location.

On the contrary, GPS receivers are becoming more and more popular. The tools in movies are a little more realistic these days than they used to be. Location tracking is more popular with the general public for directions. What they do not realize is that the location tracking that they use to keep from getting lost can also be used to find them.

While some may be alarmed at the loss of privacy, it is also a safety feature. When someone is kidnapped or just disappears, their cars, cell phones and other products with GPS receivers can help find them with location tracking. Many different kinds of location tracking products are available at spyassociates.com. Along with location tracking products, this website has many other surveillance products that are also available to meet the needs of your surveillance needs.

© 2005 Copyright www.spyassociates.com.

About The Author

Joe Gooden

To learn more about Spy and Surveillance Products visit http://www.spyassociates.com. Read other related articles at http://spyassociates.blogspot.com/.

This article was posted on September 08

by Joe Gooden

Not Sure If Your Online Advertisement is Working?

Not Sure If Your Online Advertisement is Working?

by: Karen Fegarty

Without tracking, your online advertising is just a shot in the dark. Many new and seasoned marketing individuals spend significant dollars on banner advertisements, ezline ads, and other online media but do not know which ads have brought them the greatest success.

The following is a list of online advertising methods that you may or may not be using. It is important to track all of your online advertisement. This is the only way to determine which method works best for you and where you should spend your hard earned dollars.

Site links

Articles

Ezine advertisement

Banner ads

Signatures Tag

Forum postings

Email marketing promotions

FFA postings

Free Classified listings

Paid Classified listings

Surveys

Auto responder

Payperclick listing

Reciprocal link

How do you track your advertising? There are basically two ways of tracking your advertising; sign up for a service or purchase ad tracking software to install on your server.:

A service such as ezTrackZ http://www.eztrackz.com will manage all aspects of your tracking on their servers. This is a webbased tool that will allow you to quickly create your tracking links and report your results in realtime. Other examples of service based ad tracking are Hypertracker www.hypertracker.com and goToast www.gotoast.com Cost varies from $17 per month to $67 per year depending on which service you choose.

You can also purchase software such as AdTrackZ http://www.adtrackz.com to manage your own tracking. Software like AdTrackZ must be installed and managed on your server and is available for a onetime cost.

Which ever method you choose, start now and stop wasting valuable time and dollars on unsuccessful advertising.

About The Author

Karen Fegarty is a professional marketer working with both MailWorkZ and ezTrackZ. Check out the ezTrackZ ad tracker product at http://www.eztrackz.com. and MailWorkZ’s flagship email marketing tool., Broadc@st at http://www.mailworkz.com

This article was posted on January 28, 2004

by Karen Fegarty

Tracking Dilemmas

Tracking Dilemmas

by: Mr. Kim Thiel

One time or another in your marketing efforts you will want to track your advertisingกs effectiveness, and in that tracking you will need to track outside your website (ie. Where are these hits coming from?). You may want to know: Are my FFA submissions doing any good? How many are clicking on my link from my email ad?
The average webmaster with limited web abilities and hosting constraints will see the expense of CGI scripts and turn to third party services for tracking. Such places as Roibot and Link Scout provide these services and are commonly used. But the problem is that these links are long and easily recognized as tracking links and are often ignored.
Letกs be honest. How many times have you seen that all too familiar tracking link and just passed it by? It may be for any number of reasons. You think,itกs not a domain name, so it must be some affiliate program. If you don’t know where you’re going, you’re not going to go there. Either way, the point is you can hurt your business trying to track your ads. If you have spent a year branding your name on the Internet, are you going to throw that power away in order to track your ad campaigns?
You CAN have your cake and eat it too; you just have to go about it a little differently. In the following are two methods availiable to the average marketer with limited resources:
1.) URL Redirection: If you do not have a domain name of your own, you can use a redirected URL. There are many places that offer this service for free such as http://www.shorturl.com/ or http://www.atmypage.com/. A URL redirect service allows you to assign a different URL to your actual link. Itกs really the same as the tracking link accept you’re using this for appearance, to hide the tracking URL, and to make your URL more user friendly. There are all different kinds of names that are offered, such as safelists.com, or webfreebies.com; names that actually reflect your website or offer.
2.) Onsite Tracking: When you do own your domain name, you want to use it. And having access to a website to have that domain name parked makes you a serious marketer. Chances are you have some form of onsite tracking like AXS CGI Script(http://www.xav.com/scripts/axs/). It is very popular and has a free demo you can use to check it out. Using such a tracking script is great for tracking page hits with ease or for tracking referrals and links FROM your site. However, it is not the best for tracking email links INTO your site to let you know what ad or avenue brought them to you. It is really simple though to just add a copy of your sales page and use a different page name, for example (http:yoursite.com/sale1.html). You get to use your own domain name, the URL is still short, the page will show a hit in your database, and it can be linked to any email ad you want to run. Sometimes simple does the job just fine.
So when it comes to tracking, consider the ramifications of your tracking URL, and if need be, use various methods you may come up with to get both jobs done, tracking your ads and branding your name.

About The Author

Mr.Kim Thiel Copyright Cyber Earners 20002001

For more marketing tips, training, tools, and email marketing resources, visit the popular http://cyberearners.com/bonus.html work site for the affiliate and homebased business owner where you will find 2500+ email resources for marketers.

This article was posted on February 4, 2002

by Mr. Kim Thiel

The Right Tools for Your Marketing Job

The Right Tools for Your Marketing Job

by: Scott Foreman

Time is money; undoubtedly one of the oldest clichés in existence. Have you ever thought about what it really means though? Is bending over to pick up a penny worth your time? Maybe, but would it still be worth it to cross the street for the same penny. Maybe not.

Your time has value. You can choose to use every minute of every day in any way you wish. It goes without saying that most of us would like to spend more time making money or at least have our ขmoney makingข time be more profitable.

For those of you who do any type of mass marketing, you already know about Ad Trackers, Autoresponders, and Shopping Carts. You may or may not know that you can combine all three (and more) into one service. This week we start our first of a three part series on the many uses of a so called ‘complete marketing tool’ (we’ll call it the Tool).

Every Tool has different functions, but there are a few that are fairly universal and very necessary. This week, we’ll focus on the function often called Ad Tracking. Within a Tool, an Ad Tracker allows the marketer to set up a tracking protocol for any link on the marketer’s web site.

What a tracking protocol tells you is exactly how many people clicked on your link. If the link goes to a desired location on your website, you can track your conversion rate as well. In either case, it’s invaluable information.

Here are two examples.

1) Let’s say that you are promoting XYZ Shoe Polish on your website. In the middle of one of your product comparison pages, you put a hyperlink to XYZ’s home page… www.xyzshoepolish.com (for example). You can look at your web logs to find out how many visitors that page received. Then you can go to your Tool’s Ad Tracker to find out how many of your visitors clicked on your link to XYZ. You can easily see how important that information is from a marketing perspective.

2) Let’s say you’ve just written an ebook on raising Tulips. You website is all about flower maintenance and in one of your spring articles, you put a link to your ebook sales page. Because of your Ad Tracker, you know exactly how many people got to your sales page through your article. And you know how many of your ebook customers were as a result of your well written article.

Just the Ad Tracking function alone is worth the monthly fee paid to a Complete Marketing Tool service. With the incredibly useful aspects of the Ad Tracker, you’ve already saved time and marketing dollars. Nevertheless, there are a ton of other functions that the Tool service provides. Next week, we’ll talk about the Complete Marketing Tool’s ability to track your mailing list as well as your affiliates.

In the meantime, if you can’t wait to check out the other Tool features for yourself, please feel free to check out the very same Marketing Tool we rely on everyday. See for yourself, how many of the great features could make your business easier and more efficient.

http://www.buildpassiveincome.com/cmp.php?ad=120452

Remember, be good to yourself and never underestimate the power associated with the intensity of your passion.

Copyright 2005 Foreman Enterprises

by Scott Foreman BuildPassiveIncome.com

mailto:[email protected]

We will pay you TWO WAYS to run this article!

First, we will pay you up to $25 for every person who visits our site and purchases a product as a result of you running or posting this article.

PLUS, once you confirm we will give you a FREE DISPLAY AD in our Internet Success Newsletter (thatกs how much we appreciate it)!

Make sure that you get your affiliate ID at:

http://www.buildpassiveincome.com/affiliate

This article may be reprinted for use in newsletters and websites provided that the information box is kept intact. Email notice of intent to publish is appreciated but not required: [email protected]

About The Author

Wayne and Scott Foreman are coowners of http://www.buildpassiveincome.com.

This Secret Book Made Terry Dean Rich! You Can Get it Free IF you click below now (you won’t believe the simple techniques it reveals that ANYONE can use)

http://www.BuildPassiveIncome.com/secret

[email protected]

This article was posted on January 31

by Scott Foreman

A Five Minute Task That Is Saving Me $750 A MONTH!

A Five Minute Task That Is Saving Me $750 A MONTH!

by: Richard Grady

As my regular readers will know, I often share my own online experiences in my articles in the hope that it will help some of you. As my regular readers also know, despite the fact that I have achieved a degree of success with my Internet ventures, I can be pretty lazy when it comes to the more mundane aspects of running an online business. It is usually these กboringก tasks that end up saving or making me large sums of money (when I eventually get around to dealing with them!). One day I will learn….. 🙂

This week, the incredibly boring job that I want to talk about is adtracking. Now please bear with me on this I know it isn’t the most exciting topic in the world BUT spending (literally) five minutes on this task a month ago is already saving me over $750 a month (thatกs $9,000 a year!) and there is every possibility that I could end up saving more than double that amount!

Like many website owners, I use payperclick search engines to promote some of my businesses. I am sure you are all familiar with this type of advertising but if not, you basically have your website advertised in the search results of a particular search engine and every time a browser clicks on your advert, you pay the search engine a set fee (anything from 5 cents upwards). The amount you pay is governed by how popular the search keyword that you are listed under is. For example, search terms such as กhostingก or กcasinosก etc are very competitive and could cost you several dollars a click (that is just for someone to visit your site they don’t have to buy anything!). As you can see, it can get very expensive.

Anyway, back to my story….

One of the most popular search engines to advertise on in the above way is Google, using their Adwords service. Adwords are the paid adverts that show up on the righthand side of the Google search engine listings. I have been using Google Adwords for years on and off but more recently I have only been using this service to advertise a couple of my main websites. The reason being that these sites have high sales conversion ratios (the number of people that visit the sites and actually buy something) and therefore I can justify the relatively high advertising cost.

Both of these sites were receiving good levels of traffic from Google Adwords and both were making proportionate levels of sales. Of course, the sites also receive traffic from many other sources but I assumed that as Google had always provided me with visitors that bought, that this was still the case. The bottom line was that if my PPC costs were way lower than my sales costs on each day, then I was basically happy 🙂

A few months ago, Google introduced a new tool which allows you to track the visitors that they were sending you through your advertising with them. The ad tracking tool is very easy to install and requires you to place a small piece of HTML code on your ‘thankyouก pages (for example, the confirmation of order page that a customer will only see if they have purchased from you). Once installed, Google can track their referrals and see how many of them actually make it to the ‘thankyouก page (ie. and make a purchase). The results are then displayed within your normal Google Adwords stats.

Last month I had a spare five minutes so I installed the ad tracking tool on one of my sites, expecting to find that I was correct in my assumption that a good percentage of these referrals from Google were buying from me. I was initially very surprised to see that over the first few days, hardly any of the referrals were making purchases but I put this down to an กoffweekก and let the adverts continue to run.

In the end, I tracked this specific ad for a month and the conversion rate from the Adwords referrals was appalling seriously, I really couldn’t believe it. The site WAS making sales but hardly any of the buyers were coming from the Google paid adverts. The fact was that the sales were covering the cost of the Adwords advertising but I was basically wasting money because this advertising was in no way whatsoever as effective as it had been in the past.

Result?

I stopped that advertising campaign after tracking it for a month and guess what? The level of sales on the site in question has remained constant but I am now saving over $750 a month by not paying for the Adwords advertising.

I am now tracking a second site in the same way and whilst the results so far show that the conversion rate is higher than the first site, it is still not as high as I would have expected so I may well end up ditching this campaign also and that will save me considerably more money each month!

The moral of this story? Well, itกs obvious really but it is absolutely vital that you track your paid advertising to see how effective it really is. You may well be surprised (as I was) and if it saves you a few hundred dollars a month, I can assure you it is a very nice surprise 🙂

Copyright 2004 Richard Grady

About The Author

Richard Grady has been helping people earn online since 1998. Find out more about Richard at: http://www.thetraderonline.com Free wholesale search engines: UK http://www.wholesale118.co.uk and US http://www.thewholesaletrader.com.

This article was posted on September 22, 2004

by Richard Grady

Testing and Tracking to improve your conversions

Testing and Tracking to improve your conversions

by: John Taylor

Creating an effective sales letter page is an essential part of your online success. However, unless you’re testing and tracking each critical element in your sales content and your sales process, you may be losing a great deal of time and money.

You can dramatically increase your sales conversions simply by taking the time to test and track your results. Not only will testing and tracking enable you to determine whatกs working and whatกs not, but it will also help you to focus your energy on the techniques that produce results.

When testing, keep in mind that, a technique that produces results for one person or one web site may not produce results for you or for your web site. There is no one size fits all technique that works for everyone. You must develop your own style and technique and test your results to determine what works for you.

So, what are we measuring? Well, you may think that I am over simplifying matters here but I believe that there is only one real measure and that is simply the outcome of your visitors’ decision when faced with a choice. Whatever your most wanted response is your visitor will either say yes or no. Every decision, or call to action, that you want a prospect to take must be tracked.

The result of that tracking will be a yes or a no. When you know that a specific number of visitors took the desired action, and the remainder did not, you can analyse your results. If you take the total number of unique yes calls to action, and you divide them by the total number of unique visitors to the web page you will know your conversion rate. For example, if 1,000 people visit a web page where you have an ezine optin form, and 30 people optin, your conversion ratio for that optin form is 3% (30/1000).

So what parts of your web page should you try to improve? Here is a list of web page elements that you should focus your attention on:

Headline

First few paragraphs

Follow up

Deadline

Scarcity

Delayed payment option

Price

Upgrade

Downgrade

Good until cancelled

Guarantee

Immediate back end sale

Bonus items

Reposition your offer

Alternative colours and graphics

Readability

Complementary product endorsements

Header graphic

Order page

Payment process

Navigation links

Everything else!

When you are testing and tracking make sure that you only work on one element at a time. If you change two variables and you see an improvement in conversion ratios you will not be able to identify which one factor made the contribution.

You should also bear in mind that some changes may result in poorer performance; you may get less sign ups to your ezine or less people buying your product. This is not a failure it simply means that you have discovered a tactic that doesn’t work for your audience or your product. One final point, be patient.

The expert statisticians will tell you that you need at least 25 actions for a test to be statistically valid. That means 25 new ezine subscribers or 25 sales. Anything less than that and your test results will not really be accurate enough. In fact the more results the better, you should consider 25 to be the absolute minimum and aim to get 30 to 40 if you can.

Copyright 2004 John Taylor

About The Author

John Taylor is the author of กLearn over Twenty ways To Improve Your Conversion Rate and Multiply Your Profitsก A Special Report that contains a wealth of information on professional testing and tracking techniques that can boost your conversion rate and generate increased profits. To learn how testing and tracking can boost your profits click this link now: http://www.testandtrack.com

This article was posted on March 19, 2004

by John Taylor

23 Ways To Use An Ad Tracker

23 Ways To Use An Ad Tracker

by: Harvey Segal

The ad tracker was originally developed to provide a record of all hits to a site resulting from ad placements. This article shows a host of different ways to utilise an ad tracker.

FOR AFFILIATES

#1. The Long Url Problem

Have you ever seen an ad where you are asked to click on an affiliate URL so long that it stretches over 2 lines, like this

http://www/anysite.com/cgibin/dir1/dir2/.cgi?code=123RT&type=102

35&subid=89715

Do you think your reader will bother to do the necessary cut and paste to put it in a browser?

Probably not.

And thatกs probably one lost sale.

And even a one line affiliate link may exceed the permissible length for some ad posting requirements.

The solution: use a short tracking URL.

#2. Losing Your Affiliate Code

As an affiliate you may have your affiliate code embedded in a link something like this:

http://www.abc.com/123

Some customers will bypass the affiliate code and just type in the home URL http://www.abc.com (possibly because they think that they will be paying extra for an agentกs commission)

The solution: use a tracking URL so that your affiliate code number is never seen.

#3. Make Your Ad Stand Out

You may have seen search engine results showing near identical listings for the same product, differing only in an affiliate code appended to the URL.

Your listing here will be just one of many unless you make it stand out. So bypass the standard affiliate URL and use a tracking URL.

#4. How Effective Are The Links

You can measure and compare the effectiveness of the different banners or text links the affiliate programs provide you by using a tracking URL.

#5. Changing Links

If an affiliate company change their links then your existing ads, wherever they are posted, become worthless. But if you use a tracking URL you simply revise the affiliate URL at the tracking control centre.

#6. Affiliate Program Discontinued

Similarly if an affiliate program is discontinued you just change your tracking URL to a new page where you explain the circumstances and point your visitor to your other promotions.

#7. Better Affiliate Stats

Not all affiliate programs provide you with stats about visitors. And if they do are they adequate ?

Compare a basic monthly figure say

Jan: 39 hits

with a detailed analysis such as

Jan 12: 10 hits

Jan 13: 2 hits

Jan 20: 21 hits

Jan 21: 6 hits

where you can relate those dates to particular ad campaigns.

Tracking URLs will give you these improved figures.

#8. Checking Affiliate Stats

Even if you do receive good stats from your affiliate program it still makes sense to use tracking URLs so that you can compare your figures with theirs.

A large discrepancy could mean errors in their software or (hopefully not) fraudulent activity on their part.

An alternative reason is that their measurement takes place when their page is fully loaded rather than at the start, indicating that visitors are clicking away because it is taking too long to load.

FOR EZINE PUBLISHERS

#9. Win Advertisers With Tracking Reports

If you sell advertising space in your ezine you can offer to your advertisers to replace their URLs with your tracking URLs and Email them the results.

Tell your advertisers about these benefits in your advertising guidelines

They will know the number of clickthroughs their ad has generated. They can then decide how to improve the ads for better performance

If they use a tracker program with your own domain name in the tracking URL your ezine subscribers will be more inclined to click

They can use your ezine as a test centre, modifying their ads until they are happy, before launching with other publishers

#10. Use Tracking Report Results

The tracking reports above will provide you with information on your subscribersก interests, influencing your editorial content and helping you select which potential advertisers to approach

Also, once your advertisers have seen for themselves the benefits of an ad tracking program they will be inclined to purchase one. So set yourself up as an affiliate for a program and promote it to them.

#11. Measure Your Readership

You may know how many subscribers you have but how many actually open and read your ezine and which parts of it attract most attention ?

Hereกs how to find out if you distribute your ezine in HTML Format: include an image on your page, e.g a banner or logo or a single pixel GIF. Then reference this image with a tracking URL.

For an ezine distributed as plain text it is not possible to see if it is actually opened or read. But what you can do is insert tracking URLs at the appropriate points, such as product offers or special articles, and get comparative figures for which items are being read.

AT YOUR WEB SITE

#12. The Problem Of Permanent URLs

Web sites are continually evolving and changing.

You may want to rename a page to make it more consistent and logical but thereกs a huge problem. You have given out the URL in an ebook, or a directory submission, or an article or wherever. Thereกs no way you can undo this.

The solution ?

Never provide the actual URL, just a tracking URL. You can then just edit the link at the tracking centre whenever a page is moved or renamed.

The external links, in your ebook for example, stay the same but they will redirect to your new page.

#13. What Are Your Visitors Doing ?

You have text links all over your site, links to your other pages and links to recommended sites.

Where are your visitors clicking ?

Where are they leaving your site, why, how can you stop them ?

Which graphic do they click on the most ?

Do they click on the text link more than the graphic link?

Your log files may tell you at best which are the most popular pages at your site but it is vital to know how your visitors move through your site and what is tempting them.

Use tracking URLs to replace actual links wherever you need to monitor click activity.

#14. Sell Website Advertising Space

You can offer tracking reports to your advertisers in the same way as for ezine publishers (above).

#15. Stop Piracy

If you have invested manmonths of time setting up a vital resource site involving a directory of links itกs very easy for a pirate to simply copy your page and provide useful content for his own site.

If you use tracking URLs for those directory links you can detect this copy because the ad tracking program will record the referring URL.

At the same time of course you can measure the popularity of the directory links.

USING PAY PER CLICK SEARCH ENGINES

#16. Better Click Activity Reporting

Pay per click search engines will report to you click activity on your URL. Engines vary in the frequency and format of the reporting so you can use tracking URLs instead to obtain better information.

#17. Prevent Fraudulent Activity

You can compare your figures with the engineกs and should query any large discrepancy.

If click activity is unusually high you may have a competitor clicking on just to incur costs against you. You may be able to detect this by comparing the figures for unique hits and actual hits (several hits per visitor).

OFFLINE MARKETING

#18. Check How Successful

If you have ever wondered whether it was worth advertising off line because of the supposed impossibility of measuring the response then ad tracking URLs will answer that problem. Just include them in your ads in

newspapers

magazines

flyers

billboards

press releases

shop notice boards

and so on

#19. Use The Time Reports

The date and time when clicks are made will allow you to check the progress of your ads, for example

has your newspaper ad been submitted yet ?

has your billboard notice been removed ?

how long does a magazine ad stay around ?

For a long running ad you can study the response and switch the link midstream if necessary to an improved web page.

EBOOKS

#20. Do Free Books Work ?

The main purpose of a free ebook is to get the reader back to your site. But how successful is it proving ?

Put tracking URLs in the book and you will find out.

#21. Maintain Control After Download

Once your ebook is downloaded it would appear that you no longer have any control over it. Not so. You can redirect the reader to other pages of your site by changing the tracking Url links.

OTHER WAYS

#22. Become An Ad Tracking Affiliate

Since ad tracking programs are high demand marketing tools you can profit by joining their affiliate program (if they have one).

Owning the product that you promote always gives that extra advantage e.g you can give an example of how you use it or a personal testimonial as to how it has benefited you.

#23. Privacy

You may want to post an URL somewhere and for reasons of your own not let it reveal your website. You can do this with an ad tracking program where the supplier domain name is used in the tracking URL.

About The Author

Harvey Segal

Learn all about ad trackers with Harveyกs free ebook Ad Tracking SuperTips

http://www.adtracking.com/adbook.html

Publishers can reproduce this article and change the URL to point to their own rebranded version.

This article was posted on August 10, 2005

by Harvey Segal