conversion tracking

It goes without saying that conversion tracking is extremely important. The reasoning is simple. Once you figure out what is working - it can be duplicated or refined. There is gold in those numbers! That might be exactly the problem, though.

There may be several ways to track conversions.

One common way to track conversions is through "pixel tracking". In this case, an invisible 1x1 pixel (and associated cookie) is placed on the thank you or confirmation page. When a surfer clicks on your paid ad, they are given a cookie which stays with them throughout the form or checkout (whichever is appropriate to your site). When the cookie they are given is matched to the cookie on the confirmation page, a conversion is logged. The information about this conversion usually includes the keyword or keyword phrase used to attract the visitor. Over time, you will know how well a given keyword or keyword phrase (from that traffic source) converts for a given landing page. This is valuable information. Extremely valuable.

All of the larger search engines & some of the smaller ones offer some form of Conversion Tracking for their Pay Per Click customers. This is offered as a "benefit" & in many ways it is a benefit. But be sure you understand what you are giving up in return for this "benefit".

While some search engines may have a warm & fuzzy feeling associated with them, make no mistake, they are building databases of information on you (the advertiser) and your website visitors. Not just web pages that are indexed but where your ads are pointing (landing pages), how long the visitor stays there, the location of the visitor, the search phrase (keyword), and your cpc (cost per click) among other things are being tracked. This information is known as metrics.

By using the conversion tracking offered through the search engines, you have provided them with one of the most important metrics... conversion rate by keyword. The only missing part of the puzzle is your revenue per conversion (or alternatively revenue per visitor). Regardless of this missing piece of information, it is almost a certainty that there is money at the end of the breadcrumb trail you have provided by surrendering proprietary conversion data... particularly for the big-budget advertisers or those on the first results page due to click through rate.

Pick your favorite search engine... What is their business model now? Is it the same as it was 5 years ago? It might be a reasonable assumption that the data collected now could be used to fuel a future business model or a side business. How many of the smaller PPC search engines are purely in the "search advertising" business? Are they also competitors on the side? Do they aspire to be? What about their employees who have access to your data? You would likely think twice about sharing proprietary information with someone you hired. The difference here is that you didn't hire any of the people who have access to your metrics. You just ran a ppc ad and enabled conversion tracking.

There are other options for Conversion Tracking besides the solutions offered by the search engines. There are third party Conversion Tracking products. These can be hosted solutions in which your data is collected & stored by a third party. There is little difference between this structure & using the seach engine's conversion tracking. Someone, besides you, still has your data.

Alternatively, there are scripts which can be run on your own server so that you maintain control of the data. Just be sure to research the script provider before purchasing a script. Does the script "phone home"? If so, what sort of information does it send back to the script provider?

A third conversion tracking option would be to roll your own (so to speak) if you have the ability to code it or to source a coder if you have specific tracking needs which cannot be met by other commercial products.

Some affiliate program reporting also allows the simple tracking of campaign codes. Depending on how the reporting is set up, you may be able to pass the keyword from ppc ad in the url, grab the keyword (parameter) using php & hidden form fields, and then pass the data in the form over to the affiliate site. You might even incorporate some sort of key to the campaign codes. This method would require compiling click (cost per visitor) data & campaign code (revenue per visitor) data using a spreadsheet or database. This method is the most labor intensive.

Businesses (and governments) have been collecting data on us since each was conceived. However, most of that data could not be used to duplicate your online business in the way that ppc or web analytics data could be.