Hi All,
I have completed my initials tests of what is called Google Analytics “Campaigns” and the tests were positive. Google Analytics recorded 7 visits from us clicking the link I asked y’all to click yesterday which is a far cry from the normal “0” clickthroughs Google Analytics usually reports. This solution may not be 100%, but it will be a lot closer than what we see now.
So, the solution to our Google Analytics “issues”? Please ask customers if they use Google Analytics for their stat tracking. If they do, we will send them a “White Sheet” that I will be creating to send to them, and also let them know that our clickthroughs will be tracked inside what is known as “Campaigns” under “Traffic Sources”. We will then need to take the URL’s that they send to us and customize them with the Google Analytics URL Tool located here:
http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?answer=55578&ctx=sibling
For the website URL, please put in the URL that the customer gives you.
For the campaign source, please put in newhomesdirectory. This is how the customer knows that the clicks come from us.
For the campaign medium, please use cpc to indicate that this is a cost per click. If it’s just a standard, non-cpc account, just put in listing.
For the campaign content, I would recommend using the community name (with no spaces or funky characters) so that the customer may be able to tell what community a particular click is for, but you may leave this blank if you prefer. If you put in information in this field, they can see a breakdown of their different communities under “Ad Versions” under traffic sources. This is great for any customer that has several communities as they can see a breakdown of clicks coming to their website at the community level.
Finally, for the campaign name, please use newhomesdirectory_listings.
Once you have all of the above fields set, press “Generate URL”. Copy and paste the new URL into the URL field in the admin on the NHD.com site and then save the changes.
It takes up to 24 hours for Google Analytics to start showing clickthroughs.
And please let the customer know that this will NOT work 100%. There are always people that have Javascript turned off or other glitches in the machine that might not allow a particular click to register, but this solution will get us MUCH closer to where we SHOULD be.
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Example:
?utm_source=newhomesdirectory&utm_medium=cpc&utm_content=COMMUNITYNAME&utm_campaign=newhomesdirectory_listings
? first for links without tags
& first for links with tags
The community name goes where it says Community name
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Thank you, and please let me know if you have any questions regarding any of this. Personally, I plan on sleeping MUCH better tonight after figuring this out.
Mike Sipes - Dark Lord of IT
New Homes Directory.com
