Conversion Tracking

The Conversion Tracker will tell you how effective each one of your referrers is in generating conversions to designated 'conversion pages' or 'target pages'

A conversion page is a page on which you are trying to drive traffic: for instance a subscription confirmation page, or a sale confirmation page. The goal of your site is to take visitors in, and guide them through until they ultimately convert. A conversion has happened when the visitor has reached the conversion (or target) page

If you advertise your site, we will keep track of the conversions for you automatically, you will then be able to use this data to calculate your exact return on investment (ROI) for every single one of your ads including Google Ads, MSN, Yahoo, or any other referrer that you work with.

The results of this analysis will be presented under the form of several reports : in a cumulative monthly conversion chart for all your referrals and keywords, and in the detailed of recent visitors where the click-paths of visitors who converted will be highlighted in a different color, allowing you to follow conversion paths live on your site and see how people navigate your pages when they buy your product or service

Please read below for instructions on how to implement Conversion Tracking onto your site.

1. setting up the advertisements

The links that you purchase on third-party sites in order to bring traffic to your URL must follow a specific format in order to allow precise conversion and ROI tracking.

• General case : All you have to do is edit your advertisements so that the traffic they generate is sent to:
  
  

  www.yoursite.com?source=advertiser_name

  
  instead of simply to www.yoursite.com.
  
  Visitors will end-up on the exact same page, but the added string in the URL will allow Web-Stat to properly identify the referrer every time it sends someone to your site. 'advertiser_name' can be any string of alphanumerical characters. No blanks or spaces are allowed.

• Pay per click search engines : in this case you may also want to keep track of individual keyword ads ; as a result the target URL can also include the keyword which you have purchased, on top of the referrer itself.
  
  

  www.yoursite.com?source=advertiser_name&kw=keyword

  
  'keyword' can be any string of alphanumerical characters identifying the particular keyword for this advertisement. No blanks or spaces are allowed.

  Note that the addition of a keyword parameter into the target URL is not mandatory. If you don't include one, Web-Stat will still record the keyword that the visitor typed to find your site, however, because of the content match technology used by many pay-per-click search engines we recommend that you include the keyword.

  Here is why : with content match, a purchase of the keyword 'flowers' will also bring visitors using related keywords such as 'tulip'. If you don't include a keyword in the target URL, and if someone searches for 'tulip' and finds your site, we will record the 'natural' keyword and show it in the results as 'tulip'... However, since this visitor really came because of your purchase of the keyword 'flowers', what you really need to see when doing conversion analysis is not the 'natural' keyword, but the keyword which you purchased ('flowers') and which resulted in the conversion. If you add that keyword in the URL, Web-Stat will show you conversion data using the purchased keyword along with the 'natural' one.

2. setting up the Web-Stat code

Conversion tracking requires that you specify the target/conversion page that a visitor must reach to generate a conversion. On a commercial site, this page is usually the sales confirmation page. You can make any page a target/conversion page as follows:

• use the advanced version of the Web-Stat code on this page
  
  
• replace

  wtsh[conversion_number]='#';

  with

  wtsh[conversion_number]='n'

  Where 'n' is either 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5

Web-Stat allows you to track up to five different conversion events (for instance the creation of a free trial account would be a conversion of type 1, the confirmation of a purchase would be a conversion of type 2 and the signing up to your newsletter would be a conversion of type 3). You can define these like this:

• On the free trial confirmation page, use wtsh[conversion_number]='1';
  
  
• On the purchase confirmation page, use wtsh[conversion_number]='2';
  
  
• On the newsletter confirmation page, use wtsh[conversion_number]='3';
  
  

If you set up your pages this way, all the different conversion events will be tracked separately. Visitors who converted will be highlighted in the stats and we will keep track of the referrers and keywords that generated conversions of the different types for your site.

3. a few examples

Example 1:

imagine that you sell children books and that you advertise with Google Ads for the keywords:

• 'children books' at $0.15 per click
• 'books for kids' at $0.12 per click

Google Ads will tell you how many clicks were generated by each advert, so you know that you have spent in one month : let's say, $500 for the first keyword and $400 for the second one.

What you really want to know is how much these advertising expenses have generated in terms of sales. Web-Stat can answer that question very precisely by telling you exactly how many people made it to your purchase confirmation page as a result of each of these advertisement. Here is how to do it:

1. Make sure that the traffic is sent to the proper URL for optimal detection:
   

   www.yoursite.com?source=Google%20Ads&kw=children_books (for the first keyword)
   
   
   www.yoursite.com?source=Google%20Ads&kw=books_for_kids (for the second keyword)
   

   
   
2. Make your purchase confirmation page a conversion page:
   

   wtsh[conversion_number]='1';

Result: Web-Stat will then keep track of the referrers and keywords that people who reached your target page used to find your site.

If your average sale is $20 and you find that:

• 60 people came in from Google Ads using the keyword 'children_books'
• 58 people came in from Google Ads using the keyword 'books_for_kids'

then you know that your $500 worth of advertisement for the first keyword have generated 60 * $20 = $1300 worth of sales, and the second keyword has resulted in $1160 in sales, for an expense of $400. Depending on your profit margin on these sales, you can decide if each advertisement is making money for you or not. You can also compare advertisements and keywords to optimize your advertising expenses.

Example 2:

let's consider a simpler form of advertising in which you spend $500 to send your message to a large email list.

1. Make sure that the email traffic is sent to the proper URL for optimal detection:
   
   

   www.yoursite.com?source=email_ad1

   
   
2. Make your purchase confirmation page a conversion page:
   

   wtsh[conversion_number]='1';

Web-Stat will then keep track of the referrers and keywords that people who reached your target page used to find your site.

Result: if your average sale is $20 and you find that 30 people came in referred by 'email_ad1', then you know that your $500 worth of advertisement have generated 30 * $20 = $600 worth of sales. Most likely (unless your profit margin is very high), this is a losing proposition and you should either review your ad, review the list you are working with, or allocate your advertising resources to another form of communication.