How to do cookies, Coffee, Lunch, and Conversions

[johnlew]

Hey Guys,

if anyone could start me in the right direction or forward me to the right discussion I'd appreciate it. I run a niche job board and need to know how often the people we advertise with sign up. I'm pretty new to most of this ...

Is it cookies that I need? Can I put a cookie on a landing page and then track if that user goes to a signup page? Do I need to be communicating with a database to do this? Am I retarted?

If you live in palo alto or San Francisco I'll buy you lunch for this info ...

[cgrantski]

The cookie is definitely the right move, and it needs to be recorded for every page on your site. A long-term cookie would be the most valuable because your site will have a lot of repeat visitors and you'll want to be able to count repeat AND first-time visitors; they'll have different value to you. Hope that helps. Be sure to turn on site logging to the max --- all possible fields. A lot of logging for some reason doesn't bother to record the cookie, or the referrer.

[johnlew]

Thanks! Can you recomend a place to start to learn how to implement cookies?

[cgrantski]

I'm clueless about that, I always have the technical people do it. I know that some platforms like IIS have cookie ability built in and you have to turn it on somehow. Maybe your hosting people know?

[larryn]

John,

If you tell us what platform your server is on and what technology you have available to you, perhaps we can give you specific directions.

Larry

[johnlew]

I could turn it over to the tech guys, but we are a startup and there's only so much money (we outsource tech support). If I can learn to do this its better down the line.

That said, Its an apache server. I dont have access to the server itself beyond file transfer to the root directorires and such ... I.E., whatever can be accomplished with file transfer, frontpage, dreamweaver, etc ... I guess I assumed it was something like a javascript app ... Advice? Genuinely happy to buy someone lunch or order a pizza for someone or similar benefit. IF it helps I run [CADtalent.com....]