Tracking PPC clicks to web sales

is this how to report it?

[fom2001uk]

I've recently run a PPC campaign with two ads. Both ads took the user to the homepage but I appended the URLs like so :

Ad 1 went to mysite.com?gad1
Ad 2 went to mysite.com?gad2

I'm using webtrends log analyser and hope to track clicks to sales by running a filter on Entry Page, where entry page is "mysite.com?gad1" or "mysite.com?gad2"

When the report is run, I'm looking for activity on the order confirmation pages (/thankyou.html, etc).

Have I got this right or is that too simplistic?

[cgrantski]

that's it!

[fom2001uk]

Thought it sounded too easy :-(

Didn't work (0 results all round). Tried filtering on entry page and also on filename. I think webtrends has a problem filtering on a page with dynamic URLs.

Think I remember this from before, but now I can't remember what the answer was.

Parameter analysis maybe?

[cgrantski]

hm, is that the actual URL? the page is simply gad1? I'm trying to imagine how that would appear in the log. I can't figure out if gad1 will be in the URL stem field because it's right after the domain, or whether it'll be in the query field because it's right after the "?". I assume that this URL defaults to your home page as defined in the server defaults, so I should think that gad1 will get into the query field and the stem will be either a plain / or the actual default home page name.

If it's in the stem field, just make sure your analysis program can handle pages with no extensions.

If it's in the parameter field, you don't have a value pair, so I'm not sure if any analysis program will deal with it.

You could preprocess the logs to turn gad1 into a true query pair.

[fom2001uk]

so if it was site.com?ref=gad1

then that would be a value pair and it should be picked up okay?

[cgrantski]

Yes. If you do what you describe, in your logs the stem will be /index.asp or whatever the server calls it when there is no page specified after the domain. It could also be a plain / and you should look in the log to check. The query will be the ref= pair and WebTrends and most stats packages will deal with it. WebTrends has a URL Search & Replace function that will allow you to change the logs you have so far. Set URL Search & Replace to change the range ["from beginning of string" to "end of the next gad1"] into "index.asp?ref=gad1", and for increased speed you can tell it to do so only for lines that include the string "gad1". WebTrends processes search and replace operations before it does anything else. Then you should be able to create your filter or parameter analysis or whatever. But note this peculiarity about WebTrends, because it will give you empty reports otherwise: if you've answered WebTrends' setup question about "what is the URL of the home page" with the correct URL, i.e. "index.asp" or whatever you find in the logs, WebTrends will, after doing the URL Search & Replace, substitute a plain "/" for that home page. It does this in order to make the URLs in the reports a little more user-friendly and also to deal with sites where the home page will appear in the logs both as "/" and "/index.asp" for various obscure reasons. At any rate, the consequence is that any filters or parameter analyses you create MUST be defined in a way that calls the home page "/" not "/index.asp". You can always go back and change the definition of home page (in the WebTrends interface) to "nonsense.asp" or something that doesn't match anything at all. In that case, the home page URL will not be altered from how it appears in the logs. I hope all this makes sense. And I'm assuming you have a fairly recent version of WebTrends, something within the last 2 or 3 years.

[fom2001uk]

Blimey, that's what I call a comprehensive answer!

Thanks a lot for the info. I'll get onto that and let you know how it goes.