PPC tracking script / software Options

[Webby]

First of all, congrats on an excellent forum with quality posts and replies from true professionals who know their stuff I see :-)

PPC management is something i'm contemplating offering as a service to clients in the near future.
I was wondering if there is a way of tracking a click from an Overture sponsored link. I understand this to be important and would like to be able to track Overture referals and a users path through the site. Is there any recommended script which can provide what would essentially I guess be a session id kind of thing?

Log files will only give me the number of referrals but provide no information of the path through the site (how many overture clicks will get to the sign up page for example)

PPC management is something I intend to add to my own SEO services and I want to make sure I have a good foundation on the PPC management issues and be in a position to provide professional advice and services.

In short, how best do you carry out full tracking of ppc referals? :-)

Alan

PS. Hiya Jim :-)

Note to admin:

Great forum! I have a similarly themed one of my own, albeit for German speakers that I have only recently launched. It is also phpbb 2.01. I've managed to get the thread urls etc. (flat urls). If you want to know how I managed it drop me a line and I'll go through it.
Direct forum url is http://www.abakus-internet-marketing.de/foren/

[Black_Knight]

One of the best solutions in my experience has been to use cookies, where a cookie is set whenever someone arrives at the site from an outside referral (can be any, or can be a specific domain) and the cookie data is read back and appended to the order form in hidden fields.


Decent log-file analysis can display a users path through the site to an extent, by tracking which pages were requested of the server and in which order, and narrowed down to a single IP that the requests came from. If your own log-analysis solution can't do this, this would be a good time to upgrade.
The best commercial log/traffic analyser I have found is NetTracker, but it isn't cheap.
Freeware, try Analog, or if an Apache server is used, you can actually get a mod to log to an SQL database, meaning data can be pulled out with ease using SQL queries - all hits from a certain IP, in order of request.

More about tracking in my articles on Tracking web promotions for ROI which includes a simple javascript cookie that can be used.

[TrffcSndrs]

I understand this to be important and would like to be able to track Overture referals and a users path through the site. Is there any recommended script which can provide what would essentially I guess be a session id kind of thing?
 
...Log files will only give me the number of referrals but provide no information of the path through the site (how many overture clicks will get to the sign up page for example) 

..PPC management is something I intend to add to my own SEO services and I want to make sure I have a good foundation on the PPC management issues and be in a position to provide professional advice and services.

You could try http://www.urchin.com/products/index.html Their product might be set up to do what you want (see their sample reports), or you could just get an idea for a custom script to be built to do it.

Here is a thread that might be interesting to you, it is very similar in purpose. http://searchengineforums.com/searchengine.../thread::000523

[Webby]

Thanks for your replies. I wouldnt know where to start to be honest setting cookies and the rest of it. I can do html and a bit of php but I'm no programmer. What does look good is this "stuffed tracker" script mentioned in TrffcSndrs's post (thanks for that btw).

@Black_knight
Well, I'm using WebTrends 7 for my log file analysis, which is pretty heavy duty (and expensive as well), I think you need to specify in the program however, a referral address in order to track paths (impossible given the multiple overture sources and parameters in urls). There may be a solution in Webtrends, but I can't find it. I think I'm going to have to go the "ready made" software / script route, or do some more research on the web on how to set and read cookies :-). I agree with you that cookies seem to be the most logical answer.

Thanks for your help.
Alan

[Web Diversity]

Hi Alan,

Glad you found us.

I've been watching all this great stuff you've been developing and only wish I spoke German to get some benefit from it!

In terms of managing PPC we opted for as best as possible an out of the box solution that was functional, graphical, scalable, gave us the ability to track everything our clients wanted to track and a whole lot more.

I've got to say that the solutions vary from very cheap to hideously expensive and as much as anything if you are looking to add tracking and reporting (and to be honest anyone that says they will manage a PPC campaign without those will never in a million years be able to track ROI, but that's another soap box to get on), you could try building one yourself, but why do that when there are some good products in the sub £30 a month category.

We use a program called Hyper Tracker (details at http://www.webdiversity.co.uk/ht.pl?a=webd...CKER/cre8asite/ and that's a tracking URL as well as an affiliate link and any sign-ups the money will go towards the upkeep of this site (OK Kim ?, sure hope you do Pay Pal!)

It can track PPC, e-mails, normal search engine traffic, pretty much anything you want. It can run with your URL displayed, or for those that want a bit of anonimity you can use the hypertracker.com URL's

Where it scores heavily with me is that you can set it up so that for one campaign you can have 3 different landing pages to test theories about conversions, you can track every click and where it came from.

Because it drops a cookie it can also give you a picture of what the visitor did when they were on the site and if you are selling something where they bailed or what route they took to get to the checkout.

We can graphically report on the traffic by day, by source URL (so does Yahoo deliver more than say AV?), by subcampaign (so does widget get more clicks than blue widgets), but then you can set it up to track the sales made as well and it can be integrated with your shopping cart to dynamically update your sales ledger, giving you a true ROI picture.

For the money it's excellent. You do have to guesstimate on the CPC, although with overture we can use tracking URL's with the keyword and cost embedded so that it logs the cost in each campaign.

It's great for spotting the click spam that might go on, so if you do have cause to write, you can supply all the evidence you need to back up what you suspect.

In terms of what it logs from the visitor :

IP address, Browser, search engine, search string, clicks, actions and sales. Actions could be newsletter subscriptions, forum memberships. So if you want to know how many people sign up for your newsletter from Google just set up a campaign and off you go, soon you will have that information.

There is a 14 day trial, so nothing to lose in trying it.

The only thing we don't like about it is the affiliate scheme doesn't allow "own sale" commission, and each new account we arrange for clients count as an "own sale" because of the cookie.

Good luck

[Webby]

I was hoping youd reply Jim as I think you've got more experience in the ppc management game as most :-)

I think I'll give this Hyper Tracker a try. The "stuffed tracker" option involves placeing javascript on each of my 120 odd pages and I really don't want to so that. It was also pretty complicated to set up.

If you are happy with it then I think I'll go for it.

.. I just went to that page you quoted. I see it isn't so much a software download / script than a service. That actually suits me down to the ground! I only hope the implementation isn't to complicated.

I'll keep you informed off group as to my progress if you like. I'm trying Overture out for my own site right now ( http://suche.lycos.de/cgi-bin/pursuit?matc...ing&cat=de_spkr ), more to get experience with ppc than to get more clients really, so I'll test the hyper tracker on my own site first.

As for my site being just in German. Yeah, with me being English I suppose it is an odd order to do things :-)

Germans though buy very localised online and I had no option. I'm going to mirror in english soon. I have plenty of German language business, and am looking at expanding, so mirroring in English makes sense. Now do I use a separate domain (www.abakus-internet-marketing.com) or use the same domain with an /en/ folder. Makes for long urls, but I do get the PR inheritance. Well thats off-topic but somethig I'll be mulling over the next couple of days :-)

Good to hear from you again Jim. I'll keep you informed on my progress and would appreciate any help you may be able to give setting this hyper thing up shoul dit be needed. :-)

Hope business is good for you too.

Alan

[Web Diversity]

Alan,

If a simpleton like me can set it up and get it to work then it must be easy.

One of my major concerns with using a service for something like this is if the site goes down. So far since we've been using it I think we had about 5 minutes downtime, so it's very reliable, plus it's very quick at picking stuff up (much quicker at reporting traffic than Google).

I'm glad you are getting up to speed on PPC and will do all I can to help. Got plenty of clients that keep asking me about Overture DE and although I can use Babel fish it's not exactly the best way, so we might actually get to do some business together.

I'll do anything I can to help if you get stuck, but it's very easy.

[Webby]

Have you come across these guys before Jim?

http://www.conversionruler.com

They seem to have a pretty good product as well.

I might give them and hyper tracker a try and see which one I'm happiest with I think.

The problem with both is that it seems you need to create a different site for each keyword. Or do you know if its possible to use say parameters such as ...html?=real-estate and iot could distignuish between them. I have 50 keywords alone and dont want to mirror the same entrance page it 30 times for 30 separate scripts to be embedded :-/

[Web Diversity]

Alan,

I looked at the product, but it seemed expensive and wasn't really offering you much that others don't offer.

Also, because it's snippet of code based, can you imagine trying to implement it without access to a clients site, or where they can't use SSI?

A simple script uploaded to the clients site is all we need to use Hypertracker and even if we can't upload we can still make the whole thing work.

The affiliate scheme is a pile of manure though. As an agency that sets up accounts for clients, they say we can't qualify for commissions on "our own stuff", and all of our clients accounts, because they are set up by us are treated as "our own stuff". We pay for the account and invoice the clients, it would be nice to discount what we charge by way of affiliate commissions, but the people that administer it for HyperTracker can't seem to get their head around this.

If I was really devious I could just set up one account and give each client a log in to a sub-account, but I want it to be a benefit to them, so don't go down that route.

So, if the Hypertracker developers are listening....... AGENCY TERMS PLEASE!

[Webby]

You're right about http://www.conversionruler.com being expensive. For an overture tracking you are looking at $44 per month :-/

Maybe if I ask Hyper Tracker for Agencies terms as well they may begin to see the light.

[EricWinter]

Personally I'd be happy if Hypertracker never sees the light . . .

I work for ConversionRuler

We developed ConversionRuler after having tried a number of programs including Hypertracker. There were a few main issues we had with programs like these.

Solutions where traffic has to flow through the tracking website seemed very risky. If the site goes down your traffic is lost. This could be very costly if you were paying for clicks. It could be costly to your brand image too especially if you were running banners or miniportals at partner type sites (Gordonsguide.com for the adventure travel industry, for example).

Likewise, you're in a bad place if the company goes away. It can be very difficult to get inbound linkers to change their inbound links. It obviously depends on the size of the web enterprise and how much downtime costs (or more precisely, how much the avoidance of potential downtime is worth), but for websites of a certain level (no judgement here) it is a price well worth paying. We felt that the companies we are targeting would be willing to pay a little more so that they wouldn't have to bet any of their future on a third party. (Note: This is not the sole reason for the price difference.)

The idea of putting a script on the site might or might not help with these issues (does the tracking company's site have to be up for it to function properly).

We also didn't like the fact that all these clicks would be redirected, since some search engines don't like redirects (we presumed that some of these click through url's will be spidered).

These redirect solutions don't allow you to build your site's "off page criteria" for the purpose of SEO. This may sound specious to some, but we really believe this to be important in the long term. We feel that as search gets smarter and SEO gets more sophisticated, less weight will be placed on the on page criteria (keyword densities, h1, etc) and more will be placed on off page. Again, we felt that our target audience would be willing to pay a little more for this benefit.

We also didn't like what these solutions would do to other traffic reporting systems. If you flow through the tracking company, your referrer reports will get skewed, if you use the script your entry page reports and total page views will be skewed. Of course, it is possible to correct for these or to massage your data after the fact, but this is time consuming and requires at least as much expertise as datatagging different pages.

MOST IMPORTANTLY, we liked what data tagging each landing page allows us to do. The next version of ConversionRuler (due out in early March) will allow you to track both sourced clicks (PPC, Email, Banners) and unsourced clicks (Google unpaid, other SE's, anything). We also will offer the drill ins showing original search strings for any conversion be it the click throughs, signups, orders, etc. We think this is powerful stuff and, again, it would not be possible if you weren't data tagging individual pages.
We have a long list of new functionality to implement after this version.

We also think that, page tagging aside, our system is much easier to set up. You don't have to setup any campaigns in order to get reports: You only have to tag a landing page(s) and your action pages and send some traffic.

We've thought alot about our price point. This is why it is as high as it is. We are aiming for a high level of excellence. Excellent product. Excellent programmers. Excellent Customer Support. Excellent and Ambitious Strategic Partnership Activities. Financial viability early is important along with complete reinvestment of revenues into the enterprise.

I'd love to hear feedback. It is interesting, for example, to hear that SSI's or even page access is a big question for some.

I would need to ask tech, but I don't see any reason why our basic solution (without new features) couldn't work in a script based model. If there is a strong case for a script-based solution for a significant audience, we would considering offering the option at some point in the future (simply making the case for why we feel non-script offers advantages.)

...Our questions have been more about cart access and programming ability to send ecommerce data. We figure that most will have the ability to data tag if they can do the shopping cart part.

[Black_Knight]

Hi Eric, and welcome to cre8asite.

Its always a very good thing (to my thinking) to see the vendors and developers of these sorts of things step out and invite feedback.

Of course, you already got the harshest piece, in that you now know that several well-known professionals dismissed ConversionRuler right away as 'too expensive'. It would be brilliant if you could develop either more functionality into the same price, or find a way to bring the price down so your product wasn't missing these people.

It can be great to point at superior quality and say "We're the Rolls Royce of this market", but the fact is that Rolls Royce have a very niche market, and many, many people wouldn't buy a Rolls even were it in their budget - there are other super-cars in that price range.

We're a hard market to please, especially since we ourselves have to compete in a harsh market where every penny of ROI and value has to be squeezed out to keep us as competitive as possible in pricing to our customers.

[Neal N.]

It can be great to point at superior quality and say \"We're the Rolls Royce of this market\", but the fact is that Rolls Royce have a very niche market, and many, many people wouldn't buy a Rolls even were it in their budget - there are other super-cars in that price range.

Indeed. Ammon has a great point. However, in some instances a premium strategy does have advantages in that it can reduce customer support costs and customer relations issues for a company (especially if they're small). It's a variation of the "would you rather sell 1000 widgets at $1, or 100 widgets at $10" story.

And by the way Ammon, in my case, my alternative would be a Bentley Continental GT, thank you...............

Regards,

Neal

[Black_Knight]

And by the way Ammon, in my case, my alternative would be a Bentley Continental GT, thank you...............

Good for you! Somewhere out there is a Lamborghini just made for me...

<added>In truth, I've always been an Aston Martin fan, and should I ever have the disposable income to indulge, I'll surely get one</added>

[EricWinter]

I hear what you are saying, Black Knight.

Money paid to 3rd parties comes out of the budget for "internet marketing", and this is the same budget that pays the internet marketer him/herself. For a consultant, this means that every penny that you pay for a click or for tracking is money that could have gone into your pocket.

This means that i-marketers are not fond of paying any more than they have to. The question for us is, just how frugal are these marketers and what ARE they willing to pay for?

May I ask the crowd (shall I start a new thread
What are you all looking for in ROI tracking solution? Does the redirect bother people? How interesting to you is a report that shows ROI of both unsourced (unpaid search, etc.) and sourced (PPC, email, etc) traffic? What would that report be worth monthly

What administrative features do people really want?

It would be handy to know a little about you and your marketing activities. It would be interesting, for example, to learn that the average marketer is spending $1000 month on PPC but would only spend up to $25/month on ROI reporting of any kind. If you feel comfortable sharing that info, but not with the whole world, feel free to private message me.

Thanks for any feedback. I look forward to hearing what you all have to say.

[Web Diversity]

My criticism of the pricing model was based on the fact that with success the cost increases siginficantly. I know that a lot of the models are based that way, indeed our own pricing is based as a percentage of the expenditure, so we have a vested interest in being able to prove to the clients that they are getting a lot for their investment, rather than looking at the fees as an expense. We always include these calculations in the ROI. If we make more then so do our clients.

I think I was pointing out that the costs of Conversion Ruler would place the barrier too high as an entry level solution for those advertisers looking to do this sort of thing themselves. The big sites with upwards of 5000 visitors a day would be paying a lot of money and may well be happy to do so.

It's not that the product isn't any good, just that the "sizzle" isn't loud enough.
As things stand, as long as we have decent access to the clients inner secrets and web site we can implement a complete end to end tracking service at a fraction of the cost of some of the big companies.

Admittedly, it's no Rolls Royce solution, but for advertisers that want to spend money on traffic it's a perfect fit, but it has taken a long time to road test the whole process. The budget means that most advertisers can afford it.

I'm sure I will have a "play" with Conversion Ruler, to see if there are any other benefits, I am hardly the font of all knowledge, and the smart guys that develop the software enable guys like me to look good by strapping on other skills to the product and sell the sizzle not the sausage.

[Webby]

This discussion reminds me of an email correspondance I had with the developers of a ranking software company known as Agent Web Ranking. This tool was free as a beta tool and then it went "alpha" for something like $450. It was a good tool, did what it said on the tin as we say in england, however, few SEO companies small and large were simply not going to pay +$400 for a tool that could do just the same thing, for as other tools on the market for less than half the price (topdog/topdogpro).

Most SEO's I asked were simply not prepared to pay the price.

BTW, My trial with Hypertracker has run out. I have to say it did its job well, and I particularly liked the fact there was only a need to insert code on the "action" and "sales" pages. It was for an overture campaign, so link text / redirects was not an issue as far as SEO was concerned. Now if it was an affiliate banner program or some other kind of affiliate tracking then yes, I would prefer to have a straight <a href> link rather than a redirected page. This generally means however a mirrored page for each and every partner with their own code snippets. I do not wan't to have to produce mirrored pages just for partners.

So imo, for PPC tracking where a overture referal isnt going to bring anything SEO wise anyway, I would prefer a solution with the redirect. For partner/affiliate programs, perhaps your solution would be better due to the SEO aspect of clean html linkage. Still, I do not want to make mirrored entry pages.

I'm about to give conversion ruler a try anyway and will be registering for a trial on monday. I have to say, your product will need to impress me a great deal in order to make your fee a viable option for me. As a start up, $40 per month has to provide a very good ROI to me.

Alan

[EricWinter]

Why would you have to make mirror pages? You could simply place a snippet on the original page, no? Is it generally the case that your clients are unwilling to work with you in this way?

You have to place a snippet on any action page (orders, etc.) you want to track regardless of the ROI product, correct? I would think that, likewise, you could do so on a landing page (or in an included file- like the header or footer).

If you are tracking 3 actions and using a redirect script, you need to place 3 (action) snippets and install the script.

With our model you would have to place 3 action snippets and the landing snippets. If the campaign sent everything to the homepage, that would mean only a fourth snippet. If the site had server side include technology, it would likewise require only 1 addition snippet . . . but if neither of these were true, our model WOULD require a number of additional snippets.

Is this commonly the case in your situation?

What percentage of your clients don't have SSI technology or won't allow you to access it?

Again, thanks for any feedback.

[Webby]

One thing im confused about. My landing page would be my home page for many of my overture keywords.

Now, if I have my home page as this landing page and include the code snippet, how does the reporting tool know whether this referal is from overture or from a normal search engine? Thats why I say mirror a page. Because you surely have to distinguish a ppc landing page from a "normal" search engine landing page otherwise the results would be skewed. Am I making sense here? lol.

I would not have a specific landing page built you see, as I want people to go to my home page on some terms. This is best discussed privately per email I think. I'm checking it out on monday so I can see them what is or isnt required.

[aspwiz]

You say your homepage is your landing page....
Why dont you add a querystring to it for each keyword phrase?

You can have something like:-
www.yourdomain.com?source=overture&keys=this+is+my+keyword+phrase

This way you can immediately start tracking via your server logs, and in the long term, you can write some code into your homepage to database the hits, or whatever else you want to do.

Regards,

Rob.