Forum Moderators: DixonJones
I'm looking for fairly specific functionality in a tracking app/ASP. I've reviewed the big boys (I won't mention them, but suffice it to say you've all heard of them).
Not logfile analysis or anything like that...what I need is to be able to forward traffic to client sites (from e-mail, banners, paid positioning, search engines, etc.) THROUGH a tracking URL. I also need to be able to use an unlimited number of tracking URLs and associate each with an independent item (e.g. - Google AdWords, Overture, affiliates, etc.).
OK, that's the easy part...then, I need to be able to track actions on the destination web site (the client's web site). So, for example, the client has defined their action of choice as a user signing up for their newsletter, that has to be tracked.
Then, for reporting. I have to be able to login to see the entire account, how many visitors, total actions taken, conversion rate, assign a $$ figure to each action and get aggregate $$ figures and CPC numbers based on this.
In addition, I need each "affiliate" (those we've hired to send traffic to our clients) to be able to login and see the statistics for ONLY the traffic they've sent AND assign a different $$ figure (what they'll be paid, whether CPC or CPA).
Finally, the client has to see the whole campaign, pretty much in the same way I would, except they wouldn't see the details of where the traffic is coming from, or at least wouldn't see the affiliates.
Hope that made sense.
I've reviewed about 5 or 6 programs so far and they all either 1) only offer on-the-page tracking (no forwarding URL), 2) Are too expensive to implement according to our plans to use such tracking, 3) simply don't offer the flexibility to assign dollar figures to actions, or 4) don't offer the "affiliate" portion of what I've described.
I could get this custom made, but there has to be an out of the box solution.
If anyone has any ideas, I would be extremely thankful if you'd be kind enough to post herein with the name of a platform neutral tracking app/asp.
Or, if you don't want to mention the name of the company (which I suppose is against forum policy), please sticky mail me.
Thanks,
~Canton
Tracking the clickthroughs from emails, banners etc is straight forward as you can pass them through a local tracking server of your own.
However, once the user gets on to the partner site you would need to collect their behaviour there too. For this to be possible, you would need the partner sites to implement some kind of tracking on their pages too. This would mean you would have to have a very explicit contractural arrangement with them to do this.
I would use a standard JavaScript/page tagging approach to achieve this:
1. Ensure the banner and email click throughs request page tags.
2. Ensure that the partner sites also implement the page tags to capture the behaviour you want to track (sign ups, conversion etc).
If you can get the source data then there are probably a few vendors who can help you implement a reporting solution with the correct security/permissions you are looking for.
Please let me know if you want to talk more about this.
Jonathan
