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Overture / Google Adwords Reporting


tswalling

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I'd like to begin work on a few reporting tools for overture and adwords. Maybe start with some basic reporting to look at the visitor stats to find out number of visitors and what keyword they used to get there. Then move on to some other tools which help figure out your ROI.

 

Since I don't have an active store or a current account with overture or google I'm looking for a few people who would be willing to test out any code I write. To test it locally, I'll most likely be manually inserting mock entries into my log files. People that are willing to test should have tracking urls setup in their overture accounts so that the reporting contribution can have a standard to look for. For an example for those who don't know what I'm talking about visit:

 

http://www.content.overture.com/d/USm/ac/st/track.jhtml

 

to view the flash tutorial regarding the subject.

 

Some of this may just end up being an extension of the Ad Tracker contribution but I'll have to see. Any input on this subject is welcome.

Edited by tswalling
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Hello,

I'm using both Google and Overture. they send about 8000 vists a day.

I would like to test your code.

let me know

jello

<span style='font-family:Courier'>If you can't fix it Perl it!!!...</span>

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

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A quick way to be able to calculate your ROI is to use the OSCaffiliate progrm. This mod tracks incomming clicks and purchases. Just enroll each advertiser in the program, and you can reconcile your clicks and see your conversion ratio for each advertiser. It also tracks sales from affiliates even if they don't purchase initially.

 

Seems like this would save you alot of work.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NOTE: As of Oct 2006, I'm not as active in this forum as I used to be, but I still work with osC quite a bit.

If you have a question about any of my posts here, your best bet is to contact me though either Email or PM in my profile, and I'll be happy to help.

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I've reviewed posts on the subject and have seen how OSCAffiliate could meet this basic need, but I think its valuable to have some overture/adwords specific reporting for this also. Things like breaking down number of visitors per search term, allowing the store owner to input their pay per click rate for each search term, then comparing the ROI for each of these search terms. I'm sure the affiliate mod could save some time, but I'm looking to create a specific solution for this need. Not everyone may want to install the affiliate mod just to get an idea of how their pay per click campaigns are going.

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Yes... Ilik the above idea.. I would like also to know about abuse. which we can track via IP. I would like to see what tim is working on. I do have a ton of traffic from both OVer/Google...

so i'm interested in this mod... let me know tim if you want me to beta the mod.

<span style='font-family:Courier'>If you can't fix it Perl it!!!...</span>

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

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I've reviewed posts on the subject and have seen how OSCAffiliate could meet this basic need, but I think its valuable to have some overture/adwords specific reporting for this also. Things like breaking down number of visitors per search term, allowing the store owner to input their pay per click rate for each search term, then comparing the ROI for each of these search terms. I'm sure the affiliate mod could save some time, but I'm looking to create a specific solution for this need. Not everyone may want to install the affiliate mod just to get an idea of how their pay per click campaigns are going.

Yeah, I actually like the idea of seeing your conversion rate by search term.

 

There is another contribution called the "Ad Tracker" which does not calculate conversions, but does show what ad certain customers came from. This might be able to be incorporated into you project as well.

 

One of the reason I mentioned the affiliate program, is that I like the way it can track a sale even if the customer has visited and left, and then come back again, by adding information to the OSC cookie. the length of time it calculates is determined in the admin section.

 

I think this is VERY important to have in whatever you might come up with, because many customers will visit, and bookmark, and return later to purchase.

 

I too would be interested in assisting with the Beta.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NOTE: As of Oct 2006, I'm not as active in this forum as I used to be, but I still work with osC quite a bit.

If you have a question about any of my posts here, your best bet is to contact me though either Email or PM in my profile, and I'll be happy to help.

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Yeah I'd like to take a good look at the code and features for both Adtracker and OSCaffiliate. I think the ROI per search term is important for determining how well your campaigns are going. Everyone should be doing this anyway, but saving time through a report would be great. To review it looks like some of the things we would want included include:

 

(note: all of these numbers would be per advertiser, ie overture, google, etc)

 

Overall Hits

Hits per IP/User (useful to check for abuse)

Hits per Search Term

Purchases per IP/User (doesn't figure into ROI calculation but why not I guess)

Purchases per Search Term (even if user leaves and purchases later)

ROI per Search Term

Overall ROI for Advertiser

Sorting of these numbers by Date Range

 

 

Just wanted to summarize some goals of the mod. Feel free to add more numbers. Before coding I'd like to have some requirements then plan out what will be included in what release, etc.

 

-

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It would be nice to ahve a table that we could punt in our budget (deposit in Overture) and deduct the total clicks .i.e "$9689.00 you have 3 days left of monies " just a thought

<span style='font-family:Courier'>If you can't fix it Perl it!!!...</span>

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

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Another thought would be to track the cost per click. For each search term, or advertiser, we could add the charge per click. Otherwise we wouldn't be able to get a true ROI, only a conversion ratio. Both are important, but both are needed, IMO.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NOTE: As of Oct 2006, I'm not as active in this forum as I used to be, but I still work with osC quite a bit.

If you have a question about any of my posts here, your best bet is to contact me though either Email or PM in my profile, and I'll be happy to help.

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Another thought would be to track the cost per click. For each search term, or advertiser, we could add the charge per click. Otherwise we wouldn't be able to get a true ROI, only a conversion ratio. Both are important, but both are needed, IMO.

Yes, I would be including that, but it would be a maual entry by the user. My post above was relating to what the code would generate in the report. I should have been more clear. There will be a few items that are required input in order to generate the true ROI.

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A simple thing I've done in Adwords is to set the redirect to my website with a non-existant variable attached such as this:

 

http://www.frozenlightning.com/catalog/def...hp?ref=oscforum

 

My log analysis software sorts by the incoming url, so I can tell down to the keyphrase used (if I set up a custom redirect for each keyphrase).

 

I don't have a extremely high-volume site, so this works well. You could also do something similar for each search engine listing referral, using a similar url tagging system when you submit to the search engines.

 

Otherwise you could try out Adword's new conversion tracker that's just gone live today... you have to paste a bit of code in the checkout_success.php module though (I think that's where it needs to go).

 

-al

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Another thought would be to track the cost per click. For each search term, or advertiser, we could add the charge per click. Otherwise we wouldn't be able to get a true ROI, only a conversion ratio. Both are important, but both are needed, IMO.

The Google adwords program has reporting tools that give you these berakdowns. pretty cool actually...

 

But I guess if you don't use their adwords offering, a tool like this would be a wonderful addition.

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A simple thing I've done in Adwords is to set the redirect to my website with a non-existant variable attached such as this:

 

http://www.frozenlightning.com/catalog/def...hp?ref=oscforum

Yes this is what I'd want people to do in order to setup the tool to look for a standard variable in the log files. If anyone visits the overture tutorial with the link I provided in the first post they can see an example of this. If people setup their tracking urls to be something like:

 

http:///www.yourstore.com?ref=overture&keyword=design

 

for each of their keywords then I'll know what to look for in the log files. At least this is they way I'm going to code it for now. I know I could make it more flexible but I'd like a standard to follow.

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  • 5 weeks later...

Still only planning. I'm working on a css template project using BTS with a few others right now among other things. This is still definitely something I plan to start work on but only when time permits. I'll keep people updated via this thread.

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