SITE ACTIVITY

Sections:
Activity Tracking Introduction
Using Traffic Activity Tracking Reports and Tools
Sub-Page Visitor Activity Tracking
Conversion rate report
Stickiness Report
Enhanced Advertisement tracking - SrcTag
Spider Filters
SRC URL Filters
Language Codes
Referrer Report
Local Product Searches
Referrer Sales Report
CTracker Order and Whois Report
CTracker All Orders Report
Correlated Sales Report
Q Phrase Report
Click Through Reports
Page Load and Bounce Report
Exact Match Sales Report
Enhanced CTracker Operation
Referral Header Information
Click-Fraud Report
Technical Details
Advanced Search Engine Optimization System
Enhanced Advanced Search Engine Optimization System

 

Using Traffic Activity Tracking Reports and Tools
We have a large numbber of different reports that are used to review information on sales vs. advertisements and general site activity.

These reports fall into three main groups:

CPrompt can also develop many different custom data mining report which can dig out other correlations between search engine referrals and sales. With data mining, we can draw correlations between people that bookmarked and then bought days later.

 

Activity Reporting Introduction
SendSafe can track visitors and customers to the site and then through the site - while collecting as much detail as you need on activity. Far more accurate reports are possible than with log analyzers or JavaScript page tagging systems, because this tracking is tightly integrated with the e-commerce system, web, and database servers. SendSafe uses 100% server-side tracking logic for the highest possible accuracy. Other system require JavaScript redirects or other techniques which are less reliable and can be easily blocked.

SendSafe's Traffic Activity Tracking is included with the purchase of SendSafe.

SendSafe Sub-Page Visitor Activity Tracking is included with the purchase of SendSafe's e-storefront framework.

SendSafe also includes an advanced next generation automatic search engine optimization system (SEOS) which covers the entire site.

As customers arrive at your site, SendSafe's Traffic Activity Tracking shows the relationship between PPC advertisements and sales. SendSafe can track and report on immediate-purchases as well as delayed-returning-customer purchases and much more. This type of reporting is something you cannot get with Google or Overture(Yahoo) reports which can only accurately show immediate sales.

While customers are at your site, SendSafe Sub-Page Visitor Activity Tracking shows detailed customer activity at the sub-page level. Setting up SendSafe based visitor tracking is the advanced solution and is the most powerful and accurate method available on the market today. It is the only solution that can give you super-detailed sub-page activity tracking. For example:

  1. visitor xyz looked at umbrellas on page abc for ten minutes
  2. visitor xyz looked at rain coats on page efg for five minutes
  3. visitor xyz added rubber boots (SKU xyz) to the shopping cart
  4. etc. etc.

Sub-Page Visitor Activity reporting tools are not included. While SendSafe does capture this very detailed data, Sub-Page Visitor Activity reporting requires site specific custom reporting tools to view the data which is captured. You can create these tools using SQL Query Analyzer OR CPrompt can design and build them for you.

SendSafe Sub-Page Visitor Activity Tracking can provide web-log-analyzer like reports such as page load counts but with much greater detail than the web-log-analyzer option. For example: with web-log-analyzers, you can get a report that shows that a particular product display page was loaded 10 times but you often cannot know which products were displayed on the page OR which customer/visitor it was that loaded that page and saw those products. i.e. with the web-log-analyzer option you can report that the product display page was loaded but you will not know what dynamic content was displayed on that page. The best analogy is television: you know the television was tuned to channel 11, but you do not know what was playing on channel 11 at that time the person looked at the screen.

There are a number of built in reporting tools in SendSafe, but much more can be added. Theses tools can be used to build consolidated marketing reports, tracking PPC click through rates, report on conversion rates, and more. It is possible with custom tracking addons to accurately track the exact sequence of events from when a customer arrives at the site, to how they browse products, enter products into the shopping cart, and then checkout.

Key items and events which are analyze as part of Site Activity:

MIReferrer: The database column where the referrer information is stored for a customer. This information can be used for verification and measurement of PPC advertising. Note: This information does not include the SrcTag or Browser type data which is saved in the eventlog. This this extended info you will need to cross-reference to the eventlog records associated with this order.
function getReferrer(): The function which retrieve cached referrer information from cookies.
SendSafe.RefCapture.inc.asp: This is the include file which contains programming logic which captures referrer information for customer records. This file needs to be included in all NON-SENDSAFE ASP webpage (none SendSafe pages are pages which do not include basic SendSafe support functions). For core SendSafe webpages and Store.* webpages, SendSafe.RefCapture.inc.asp is included as part of SendSafe.pageinfo.inc.asp logic.
sub logSessionEvent(): The function logs all visitors to the system. One EventLog entry is made for every visit (debounced with session cookie continuity checking). Event = 10001 (ecVistorTracking). Logic is invoked when the Sub Application_SendSafe_OnStartSession event fires.
EventLog table: The Eventlog database table contains various event logs including visitor arrival and customer login/logoff. Security related events are also included in this table.
EventLogArchive table: The EventlogArchive database table is an optional table which contains archived event logs. This table should be setup for all higher traffic sites. To disable use of archive set Application("EventLogArchive") = "".
Event ecVistorTracking: The ecVistorTracking event contains the IP Address of the visitor and in the info field the first 256 characters of the referrer URL (i.e. www.yahoo.com ……). This record can be used for verification and measurement of PPC advertising and can help in cases of click fraud. The customerID is not known at this stage of a visit and therefore will always be zero. Custom reports can be created for this information. This record is also used by the SendSafe conversion rate report. Special search engine tags can be (optionally) included. If the search engine URL includes a tag then the value of that tag is saved along with referrer information. The tag is defined by Application("SActivityPPATag") = "SrcTag"
One tracking event will be added to the DB for each new visit. A visit is defined as any of the following These various events are filtered and reported. The absence of referrer information can be used to identify a bookmark or URL entry. The presence of referrer information can be used to identify a website link or search result. The presence of a SrcTag can be used to absolutely identity the source.
Event ecVistorPageLoad or ecCustomerPageLoad: The ecVistorPageLoad or ecCustomerPageLoad events contain the IP Address of the visitor, the customerID (if a customer record) or the Session.ID (if a vistor record), and in the info field the file that was loaded: See also Sub-Page Visitor Activity Tracking.
Event ecVistorPBrowse or ecCustomerPBrowse: The ecVistorPBrowse or ecCustomerPBrowse events contain the IP Address of the visitor, the customerID (if a customer record) or the Session.ID (if a vistor record), and either: See also Sub-Page Visitor Activity Tracking.
Event ecVistorLBrowse or ecCustomerLBrowse: The ecVistorLBrowse or ecCustomerLBrowse events contain the IP Address of the visitor, the customerID (if a customer record) or the Session.ID (if a vistor record), and either: See also Sub-Page Visitor Activity Tracking.
Event ecVistorAddToCart or ecCustomerAddToCart: The ecVistorPBrowse or ecCustomerPBrowse events contain the IP Address of the visitor, the customerID (if a customer record) or the Session.ID (if a vistor record), and in the info field the ItemCodeId of the item that was added to the cart. See also Sub-Page Visitor Activity Tracking.
Event ecSQLBLoadMetric: The PRODUCT BROWSER ecSQLBLoadMetric events contain the IP Address of the visitor, the customerID (if a customer record) or the Session.ID (if a vistor record), and a count of the number of records returned for display as a result of the SQL DB Selection. This data which is used to analyze SQL DB load from the product browser search engine.
Event ecSQLLLoadMetric: The LISTING BROWSER ecSQLLLoadMetric events contain the IP Address of the visitor, the customerID (if a customer record) or the Session.ID (if a vistor record), and a count of the number of records returned for display as a result of the SQL DB Selection. This data which is used to analyze SQL DB load from the listing browser search engine.
Conversion Rate Report: This report shows what percentage of visitors bought something. It is the single most important sales efficiency measurement tool available for a website. This ratio allows you to make changes to your site and then measure the effects of those changes.

Event types which are logged:

FAQ

Need to seeSolution
How many visitors came to the site Use the "Click Count Date Report," "Click Count Hourly Report," or "Click Count Weekday Report" to see the estimated total number of visitors. For a more accurate number, use the conversion rate report to see visitors and sessions. Remember to check both live and archive.
Detailed visitor activity on certain pages and ctracker starting points Use the "Tracking Page Load Report Src Filtered" and set the DST PAGE filter to the name of the partial or full page name.
Numeric measure of visitor activity and ctracker starting points Use the "Tracking Page Load Count Report Src Filtered" and set the DST PAGE filter to the name of the partial or full page name.
Numeric measure of multilingual visitor activity on pages in English, Spanish, etc. Use the "Tracking Page Load Report Src Filtered" and set the DST PAGE filter to (ISO langauge code) i.e. (EN), (ES), etc.
Numeric measure of page popularity for a multilingual visitor Use the "Page Load Count Report Dst Filtered" and set the DST PAGE filter to (ISO langauge code) i.e. (EN), (ES), etc.
The default langauge setting of visitors Use the "Referrer Report" and set the SRC filter to {ISO langauge code} i.e. {EN}, {ES}, etc.
Visitor's breadcrumb trail through the site Use the "CTracker Report" and set the CTRACKER filter to the CTRACKER code for a given visitor.
Multilingual detailed visitor activity and breadcrumbs pages in English, Spanish, etc. Use the "CTracker Report" and set the DST PAGE filter to (ISO langauge code) i.e. (EN), (ES), etc. and optionallyset the CTRACKER filter to the CTRACKER code for a given visitor.
All bounces Use the "Bounce Report Src Filtered" and set nothing in the filters.
Bounces from a referring website Use the "Bounce Report Src Filtered" and set the SRC to the partial or full name of the referring website.

 

SRC URL Filters
This filter is very important. The filter operates on the entire URL including parameters. It is used to select specific sources of traffic for analysis. Typically an SrcTag will be used in this field to limit the report to a specific advertisement or other source of traffic.

This field accepts multiple entires delimited by commas. Each entry can have a '-' minus sign prefix which means EXCLUDE any URL which contains this phrase.

TIPS:

Spider Filters
The SPIDER dropdown on the reports page allows you to choose to include or exclude spiders from your report. Spiders are internet-robots which visit a site and index it. Google, Yahoo, etc. all use spiders. If you do not exclude spiders from your reports, you will see many non-human visitors since the spiders will be reported as visitors to the site. Since spiders do not buy anything (yet), it is advisable to exclude them from all reports unless you are specifically analyzing spider activity on the site; in which case you should include only the spiders.

Settings:

Please note that using the spider filter on reports can dramatically alter the reported results. The spider filter will not work on Exact Match Sales Reports.

CTracker Orders and Whois Report
This Traffic Activity Tracking report can be found in the SendSafe Activity Report Admin web page vao.SiteActivityReport.asp

Without CTracker filtering, this report lists all orders and customerid (whois) for a date range.

For Whois a report, enter the CTracker code from some other report such as Referrer sales and find all orders which occured for the Ctracker.

Transactions will be listed more than once if multiple Ctrackers were found with linkage to the same transaction. Multiple records for the same transaction will be grouped together. SRC URL Filter is not valid for this report.

 

CTracker All Orders Report
This Traffic Activity Tracking report can be found in the SendSafe Activity Report Admin web page vao.SiteActivityReport.asp

This report will show all orders including amount for a given CTracker. This report is a quick way to see how much a specific customer spent at your site.

 

Language codes
If multilingual support is enabled, every eventlog entry will be prefaced with the ISO 3166 language code in parenthesis in which the site was displayed. This language may not always be the same as the default language configured in the browser. The default browser setting is captured in referrer data records and differentiated from the displayed language by enclosing the ISO Code in curly-braces {} instead of parenthesis (see for more info).

 

Referrer Report
This Traffic Activity Tracking report can be found in the SendSafe Activity Report Admin web page vao.SiteActivityReport.asp

Use the various referrer reports to find out where your traffic is coming from and the search phrases which are used. This report is also very useful as a starting point for tracking the activity of a specific visitor.

There are two version of this report: "Referrer Report" and "Referrer Grouped Report"

Use the source filter to selection sources such as google or yahoo. The destination filter has no effect.

The referrer and referrer grouped reports show the raw data that was captured SendSafe. This data is used for other reports. This data is captured regardless whether a visitor has cookies enabled, javascript enabled, etc. It is the single most accurate capture of site activity data. Far more accurate that WebTrends-like log analyzer reports and far more accurate that native search engine reports. This data comes from the eventlog database table.

See Referral Header Information for an understanding what the data in this report means.

Note: grouped reports will often show a different total than non-grouped reports. This difference is due to the fact grouped reports require referrer information including URL parameters. Non-grouped reports do not require this information. So items without this information can show up in the non-grouped report.

 

Click Through Report
This Traffic Activity Tracking report can be found in the SendSafe Activity Report Admin web page vao.SiteActivityReport.asp

See the referrals to buying sites or other desired events which have occured are link those events back to the advertising source. Events are any Eventype 10015 and 10016 events.

Events are logged by the SendSafe.clcr.asp page or a custom page which is required for these reports to work.

Use the Src URL Filter to select the traffic source sites you would like to check. Leave the DST Page filter empty or set it to a specific click-through target or event note (i.e. amazon.com or ebay.com)

This report lists click-through events which occur on your site (not an advertiser's site); for example: someone clicks on a link which loads amazon.com OR loads a PDF page for viewing. The click-through event is captured by using the SendSafe.clcr.asp redirector page (see usage below).

There are several version of this report: "Click Through Report" and "Click Through Report with Src Filer" with various reporting additions

This report uses CTracker to link multiple events together. In this case of this report, the initial referer event is linked. You can enter SRC URL filter values such as the name of the referring website i.e. "nytimes" or a SrcTag i.e. (Google. By entering this type of filter information you can answer questions like: "How many click-throughs from an advertising source resulted in a local click-through event"

The click through src report can be used to see which advertising sources resulted in visitors performing the desired click-through or event.

The Click Through Count Report can be very useful in assessing how productive a given advertisement or other traffic source is in generating click-throughs. This report when used in combination with SrcTag filters in the SRC URL field provides statistics for the SrcTaged source.

SendSafe.clcr.asp page usage:
Usage: SendSafe.clcr.asp?s=index.asp&c=cid&r=http://www.hshsg.com

c = customerId (optional)
r = redirect URL
s = source tag

Example:
<a target=_blank href="http://www.yoursite.com/SendSafe.clcr.asp?s=index.asp&r=http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/182736">Amazon.com</a>
<a target=_blank href="http://www.yoursite.com/SendSafe.clcr.asp?s=index.asp&r=http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?z=y%26EAN=1234567%26itm=1">Barnes & Noble</a>

Use the CTracker Order and Whois Report to identify specific orders and customers shown in this report.

Page Load and Bounce Report
This Traffic Activity Tracking report can be found in the SendSafe Activity Report Admin web page vao.SiteActivityReport.asp

Use the tracking Pageload Count report to see if a specific traffic source is sending interested visitors. This report is also very useful as a starting point for tracking the activity of a specific visitor. This report can also be used to display page popularity and detailed visitor paths through the site.

Use +/- URL filters to select the traffic source sites you would like to check. The more pages a visitor clicks on, the more interested they are in your site. Once click or two click wonders (also called bounces) are visitors that are not interested in what they have found on your site.

Our bounce report shows true bounces, unlike other reports that rely on session timeout, we measure the true dwell and activity of each individual visitor showing who is staying and who is going. This report can be filtered by source (google, yahoo, etc.). This report can also be filtered by destination which can provide interesting information; but be careful with filtering, if you limit the pages in consideration too much you will not longer have a bounce report but a page interest report.

Do you want to limit your report to a specfic page? Use the destination page filter to limit the report to a specific page or wildcard matched set of pages.

By limiting the page load reports to a single destination page, you can see how many times each unique visitor returns to this page. This metric can be used to gauge which pages have greater or less interest individual visitor's from specific sources.

Select any CTracker code from the broader reports and enter it into the "Tracking Page Load Report" to see the actual page activity of a specific user.

This report lists target page load events; for example the buying page was loaded or a special information was loaded. The page load to check for is entered into the "DST PAGE FILTER" field. This does not have to be a full page name (SQL %yourpage% wild cards are used AND therefore it is possible to include multiple similar pages).

There are three versions of this report. "tracking page load report src filtered" and "tracking page load count report src filtered"

The "page load count" version of this report is very useful in ranking and identifying which advertising sources are sending people which load more pages and are therefore generally more active visitors.

This report uses CTracker to link multiple events together. In this case of this report, the initial referer event is linked. You can enter SRC URL filter values such as the name of the referring website i.e. "nytimes" or a SrcTag i.e. (Google. By entering this type of filter information you can answer questions like: "How many click-throughs from an advertising source resulted in a specific page load"

For this report to work, Sub-Page Visitor Activity Tracking must be enabled AND Application("urlfor_BASEORDERINGPAGE") must be set correctly to the page where orders are placed.

Use the CTracker Order and Whois Report to identify specific orders and customers shown in this report.

Local Product Searches
This report lists events when customers search on your site for products on your site. Both product searches and product browsing are included in this report i.e. ecSQLLoadMetric eventtype = 10017.

The Search term or browser drilldown category is listed along with the number of records which were returned. The Term Information is tagged with a "C" for category or an "A" for Advanced Search.

The "Local Product Search per Hour" report shows how many searches were performed per hour. This is a measure of the workload the system is functioning under.

Q Phrase and Q Phrase Grouped Report
This Traffic Activity Tracking report can be found in the SendSafe Activity Report Admin web page vao.SiteActivityReport.asp

Use these reports to list what people typed into Google. This is the search phrase which brought them to your site.

This report will list search phrases and (in the grouped report) the number of times that search phrase was used. This report will only work with search engines which use the "Q=" URL search format. All other search engine results will not be included. This report will include google and some of google's affiliated networks.

See Referral Header Information for an understanding what the data in this report means.

Phrase Grouped Report
This Traffic Activity Tracking report can be found in the SendSafe Activity Report Admin web page vao.SiteActivityReport.asp

This report will list search phrases and the number of times that search phrase was used. This report will list all search phrase in raw URL format including all URL parameters with the "&" delimited removed.

Note: grouped reports will often show a different total than non-grouped reports. This difference is due to the fact grouped reports require referrer information including URL parameters. Non-grouped reports do not require this information. So items without this information can show up in the non-grouped report.

Referrer Sales Report
This Traffic Activity Tracking report can be found in the SendSafe Activity Report Admin web page vao.SiteActivityReport.asp

See which search terms contributed to sales.

This report lists all referrer data associated with all sales. This powerful report uses data mining and CTracker data to link customers who bought products with all the search terms they typed to find the site. This report will also show which advertisements brought them.

This report is almost 100% inclusive; unlike exact match or correlated sales. This report is more complicated to interpret since it is possible that a single buyer may have been brought to the site on more than one occasion by different ads, and therefore, multiple ads will be reported. It is up to the user to understand the implications of multi-sourced buyers and account for it in any statistical analysis.

This report mines data in three steps:

  1. The report collects all customerids with sales which occurred in the date range (exact) or date range plus grace period (date limited).
  2. The report collects all CTrackers which are connected to the pool of customerids collected in step #1. There can be multiple CTrackers for a single customerid. This collection works within the date range + grace period.
  3. Lists in a report all the "visitation events" and tracking information which was collected during the date range (exact) or date range plus grace period (date limited) for all eventlog entries which match the pool of CTrackers collected in step #2.

Use the CTracker Order and Whois Report to identify specific orders and customers shown in this report.

There are three different versions of this report:

Referrer Sales Report: Use this report to identify long term treads in customer interest in specific advertisements. This report collects into a pool all customers that completed a purchase during their entire history with the site. This report then filters to include only customers who clicked on ads during a period of twice the date range or a minimum of 10 days. The report can be further filtered by the source URL (tag) and other filters you set.
Referrer Sales Report Date limited: Use this report to gauge the effectiveness of a promotion over time. This report can be used to list only sales resulting from a click which occured around a period of time. This report collects into a pool all customers who completed a purchase during a period of twice the date range or a minimum of 10 days. The report can be further filtered by the source URL (tag) and other filters you set.
Referrer Sales Report Exact Range: Use this report to measure the immediate short-term results of a promotion. This report can be used to list only sales resulting from a click which occured during an exact date range (i.e. limited to an advertisement campaign run). This report collects into a pool all customers who completed a purchase during the exact date range entered for the report. The report can be further filtered by the source URL (tag) and other filters you set.

CTracker data capture for these reports is extended beyond the entered date range for a period of twice the date range or a minimum of 10 days.

Correlated Sales Report
This Traffic Activity Tracking report can be found in the SendSafe Activity Report Admin web page vao.SiteActivityReport.asp

The purpose of this report is to show sales which can be attributed to search engines. The report shows a filtered subset of impulse and collateral buyers and the ads which brought them to the site. This report will not show you all the collateral or impulse buyers but does show you a reliable subset designed for use for statistical analysis.

This report shows the relationship between search engine clicks and delayed purchases. This report will show you that a customer clicked on PPC advertisement 2 months ago and then bought the product today returning via a bookmark.

This report performs data mining to identify relationships between search engine click-throughs and subsequent sales. This report differs from reports such as "Exact Match Sales" because this report will relate a sale to a click-through that occurred during a different (prior) visit to the site; where the visit to the site can have occurred as much as 90 days prior to the sale.

The date range of records checked for correlation will be equal to the start date of the report minus 90 days.

The IP Address included in this report is the IP Address with which the order was stamped. This IP Address is an ironclad identifier of where this order came from and can be used to correlate this order to other events.

Filters only apply to correlated sales NOT exact match which are included in this report.

This report will include all exact match orders which occurred during the timeframe. Exact match bypasses all filtering; and therefore exact match orders will be included in a report regardless any IP Address or URL filters used.

This type of data mining does not generate 100% results; sales that should be included are sometimes not picked up in the report and visa versa. Typically more sales are excluded wrongly then included wrongly. It is difficult to state a single accuracy figure for this type of data mining report. Here are a few examples:

Important Note: An automatic filter is applied for this report to accurately identify correlated sales. This filter will exclude pages loaded from bookmarks that cannot be unassociated with a search engine click-through. This filter is [ NOT LIKE '%yoursite.com%' ].

The correlates sales report uses intelligent IP data mining NOT matching. This is done to capture the sales from people who use modems or broadband with dynamic IP addresses.

Exact Match Sales Report
This Traffic Activity Tracking report can be found in the SendSafe Activity Report Admin web page vao.SiteActivityReport.asp

Use this report to see your impulse buyers. This report shows only customers who can be 100% confirmed to have come to the site and bought immediately.

Important filtering note: You must not use Spider Filtering with this report. Disable spider filtering by selecting the "ignore" option from the dropdown box.

This report shows the relationship between search engine clicks and immediate purchases. This report will show you that a customer clicked on PPC advertisement and then during the same visit purchased a product.

This report identifies 100% certain relationships between a search engine click-through and an immediate sale. To be included in this report the sale must have occurred during the same visit as the search engine click-through. The vistor must have cookies enabled in their browser for this report to capture their sales information.

All sales reported in by exact Match will also be found by the data mining report correlated Sales.”

The IP Address included in this report is the IP Address with which the order was stamped. This IP Address is an ironclad identifier of where this order came from and can be used to correlate this order to other events.

Important Note: An automatic filter is applied for this report to accurately identify correlated sales. This filter will exclude pages loaded from bookmarks that cannot be unassociated with a search engine click-through. This filter is [ NOT LIKE '%yoursite.com%' ].

100% accurate relationships can only be captured when a customer comes from the search engine and then makes a purchase. If the customer bookmarks the site and then returns another day to make their purchase, a 100% accurate relationship cannot be made. So 100% accurate relationship data is valuable, but it will not include all sales attributable to a search engine. Therefore, it only provides a partial picture which must then be augmented with statistics from other SendSafe reports such as the "Correlated Sales Report."

Enhanced CTracker Operation
This Tracking report can be found in the SendSafe Activity Report Admin web page vao.SiteActivityReport.asp

This report shows in great detail what a customer does and in what order they did it! This report shows the search terms used to get to the site, it shows the pages visited on the site, it shows the products purchased, and it does ALL this spanning mulitiple visits and days.

CTracker enhanced operation uses a cookie to identify and track returning visitors. Without Ctracker, correlated sales and other reports must rely on fuzzy IP address to identify a vistor. While fuzzy IP address identification works reasonably well, there are miss identifications which can occur when a proxy or NAT device is used by the vistor.

CTracker saves a GUID in the CTracker column of the event log. This Ctracker value can then be used to link otherwise disparate eventlog records together. Important notes on using Ctracker in reports:

  1. It is possible for a single individual to have more than one CTracker value.
  2. CTracker can be used to collect a set of IP addresses which have been used by a visitor. This set of IP addresses can then be used to enlarge the universe of eventlog records for this visitor.
  3. Ctracker can be used to enhance returning vistor counts
  4. Ctracker can be used to enhance the accuracy of correlated sales
  5. CTracker can be used to enhance the accuracy of exact match sales

The Sendsafe.ShoppingODBC.inc.asp file contains logic which reads the GUID CTracker value from the cookie Request.Cookies("REFINFO")("TK").

Every EventLog entry is then stamped with the GUID obtained from the cookie.

CTracker is disabled by default on older systems. For an older systems to use CTracker, a CTracker column to their DB. Once the column is found, the system will automatically enable CTracker operation (Application("SACtivityCTracker") = true).

[CTracker] char (20) NULL
The function which performs this automated on/off function is: setSACtivityCTracking().

The function logSessionEvent() in globalcode.in.asa will create a GUID Ctracker value for any visitor that does not already have a GUID.

Click-Fraud Report
This Tracking report can be found in the SendSafe Activity Report Admin web page vao.SiteActivityReport.asp

The Click-Fraud report shows which IP addresses are repeatedly accessing your site via PPC advertisements.

It is recommended that you include a SActivityPPATag in the URL FILTER fields. This will limit the report to a specific PPC source (i.e. Google or Yahoo).

This report will show when someone using the same or similar IP address is repeatedly clicking on your PPC advertisements. This system does not rely on statistics from PPC vendors or end users; and therefore cannot be tampered with. Disguising the originating IP Address of the source is impossible. The only way this report can be partially affected is if the source of the click-fraud is using a blind proxy to relay their HTTP traffic; and this effort at disguise does not prevent the clicks from being identified as fraudulent, it only hampers the ability to identify the ultimate perpetrator.

A reverse DNS lookup should be preformed on all questionable IP Addresses to identify the company or individual.

This report generates far more accurate results than WebTrends-like log analyzer reports and far more accurate than results native search engine reports. This data comes from the eventlog database table.

Referer Header Information
A key source of detailed referral information comes from data provided by each visitor's web browser. This information is found in the "HTTP referer header" (yes, it's spelled Referer instead of Referrer). This header information is a key source of offsite tracking data.

Every browser keeps a record of the hyperlink that was clicked on which brought the browser to its current webpage destination. The information found in the "HTTP referer header" includes both the URL of the web site where the link was located and all URL parameters. Search engines use URL parameters to perform searches and as a side-result, these URL parameters are included in the "HTTP Referer header." This means that the query which was entered by a visitor on a search engine is passed to the destination HTTP server as part of a page load request (HTTP GET). The SendSafe system will record this reliable PPA/CPM advertising information as long as the HTTP header information is intact.

Referral header information can be blocked by 3rd party security software or special anonymous ISP configurations. SendSafe can also used Enhanced Advertisement Tracking which cannot be blocked by either security software OR anonymous ISP configurations. For high accuracy PPC advertisement tracking, using Enhanced Advertisement Tracking is strongly recommend.

Referer header information is difficult for a nontechnical person to block. No current browsers block it because to do so would cripple many different kinds of security, auditing, and commence functions on a vast number of websites. Some 3rd party security programs sold to consumers have the ability to block some of this Referer information. The result is that consumers using this security software find that while invisible information is blocked, for some unknown reason some websites just don't work anymore because they needed Referer information to function.

Blocking Referer information is a misguided attempt to preserve anonymity. This information is not useful for abuse and reveals nothing secret. All it does is send a copy of the "URL which was clicked" to the same webpage which was opened by that same click. It does not contain a history of past sites. It does not reveal personal information. It is anonymous marketing data.

Interpreting Referer information in SendSafe:
SendSafe captures all the referering information avaialable at the time of first contact. SendSafe adds some additional information to each block of captured referer header information. Each entry is flagged by SendSafe with extra visitor information.

The first 2 character code in each entry indicates the default language code:

The next character code in each entry indicates the following: The third (optional) character code idicates the following:

Referer information is HTML URL encoded. This means some punctuation charcaters are encoded by the referring website (google, yahoo, etc.).

CharacterCode
(Hex)
 Dollar ("$")
 Ampersand ("&")
 Plus ("+")
 Comma (",")
 Forward slash/Virgule ("/")
 Colon (":")
 Semi-colon (";")
 Equals ("=")
 Question mark ("?")
 'At' symbol ("@")
 24
26
2B
2C
2F
3A
3B
3D
3F
40

These codes will appear in phrases and look like this: This is John %26 Mary.
Where %26 = the ampersand '&'."

Full spec can be found here

 

Enhanced Advertisement tracking - SrcTag

Enhanced Advertisement tracking is used to differentiate between PPC clicks and non-paid-for search engine clicks.

Enhanced Advertisement tracking does not rely on Referral Header Information and therefore cannot be blocked by security programs or other filtering devices.

When using enhance tracking, all of the sales containing the “(Enhanced tracking)” source tag can be attributed to the PPC vendor with almost 100% certainty. For example, you can be very sure that sales tagged with the “(google)” tag came from google, a google affiliate, or a site which scraped google PPC search results. All of these sources are 100% attributable to google and sales which you would not have had without the google PPC listing.

Enhanced tracking tags are included in the event log by adding a special tracking tag in the URL which is used by your advertisement. The tag is defined by Application("SActivityPPATag") = "SrcTag". The search engine advertisement URL will need to include this tag as a URL parameter. For example: the following tag will result in all traffic coming from your advertisement on Google being tagged in the event log with the word "(google)" - www.yousite.com/index.asp?SrcTag=Google

Stickiness Report
This report can be found in the SendSafe Admin web page vao.stickyreport.asp

This report shows the stickiness of your site. The report lists customers grouped by "ordering classes" which are set by configurable cutoff points. Optionally, you can select "Product Type" or "Product Category" filters to report on a subset of the total orders within a chosen date range.

 

Conversion Rate Report
This report can be found in the SendSafe Admin web page v2.AdminConvRate.asp

The industry average conversion rate is 0.5% to 2%. This means about 1 out of every 100 visitors buys something. This is a broad average covering all e-commerce sites that participate in marketing studies.

Conversion rates do vary broadly depending upon product line, price, target demographics, policies, and focus of advertising and pay-per-click.

These listed ranges are averages of all industries and should only be used as rough guides. What is import are any trends in conversion rate for your business. Medium term trends of a few months (up or down) should be investigated to see what has been changed. Valuable information for tuning the website and your business practices can be obtained from this report.

Industry experience has shown a range of 0.3% to 25%. The industry benchmarks on Conversion rates are:

Data from this report is set up so that you can directly cut & paste data from the web page into an Excel spread sheet. To do this ONLY mark the report data itself and no other areas of the web page, then cut & paste.

Data column descriptions:

MonthThis is the month for this line of the report
DayThis is the day for this line of the report
YearThis is the year for this line of the report
OrdersThis is the total number of orders completed during this period
SalesThis is the total dollar amount of all completed sales (charges which failed to authorize are not included)
Sessions This is the total number of sessions on the web site during a period of time. Sessions counts the number of times the website is accessed by any means. Think of this as "viewing" of your site. If a person searches for your site and comes to your site, and then they come back later that evening to read more, they count as 2 sessions. Or if their session "times out" because they went to lunch and then came back to the computer, they will count as 2 sessions. (Sessions have a time limit of about 20 minutes, and then they time out.) So this "sessions" number is skewed to the overcount side. How sessions are measured is somewhat of a universal Internet standard and as such, it is a metric found on almost every system in the world.
Uniques

This is the total number of unique visitor sources to the web site during a period of time. Uniques is a number / terminology used by outside sources, and so we have it in our tools in order to give an apples-to-apples report comparison. It most closely represents unique IP addresses. So if 10 people from one IP address (1 company, for example) visit your site, they show up as 1 unique.

Due to technical limitations in tracking proxy visitations, this count is always lower than the number of visitors unless all visitors are using static Internet routable workstation IP addresses (which is very unlikely).

Visitors

This is the estimated total number of visitors to the web site during a period of time. Visitors are visitors to the site, whether they come from Google or bookmarks or typing or clicking through from some other site. This number more accurately reflects web advertising impact, since people will return through other than search engines. Due to technical limitations in tracking and identifying anonymous visitations, as is true with all traffic measurements, this count does have a margin of error. This "visitors" number is a bit skewed to the undercount side. SendSafe comes as close as is technically possible to counting visitors per unit time, closer than any outside 3rd party tool can.

Conv rate SessionsThis is the ratio of the number of unique sessions verses number of orders completed.
Conv rate UniquesThis is ratio of the total number of uniques verses number of orders completed.
Conv rate VisitorsThis is a calculated visitor standard conversion ratio which is the most accurate of the three different ratios which are displayed. This ratio uses the average number of sessions, uniques, and visitor to calculate the ratio of orders placed.

Sub-Page Visitor Activity Tracking
Capturing Sub-Page Visitor Activity Tracking data is an optional add-on in the E-Business framework. This tracking data provides superior accuracy for tracking which pages are loaded and more importantly (for dynamic content sites) what is displayed on the content page or product browsing pages that are loaded. The system also tracks as separate events every time an item is added to the cart.

The logic which captures this information is located in the E-Business framework (incfile_loader.inc.asp:incFileLoaderWriter_ENDPAGE()).

The key browsing events are:

For product browsing pages the event will include the search phrase used to load the page (which contains the list of products displayed). For showcase pages, the key phase will include "showcase=" where this string equals the SQL used to load the product into the showcase. For add to cart events, the product id (Itemcodeid) for the item added is included in the information string. For page loading events, the information will be either (a) the filename of the page loaded or (b) the string used to retrieve DB or dynamically generated content.

For Sub-Page Visitor Activity Tracking to function, Application("SACtivityPageLevDetail") = true

Sub-Page Visitor Activity reporting tools are not included. While SendSafe does capture this very detailed data, reporting requires site specific custom reporting tools to view it effectively. You can create these tools using SQL Query Analyzer OR CPrompt can design and build them for you.

The tracking data is used for two different analytical purposes: customer behavior and content popularity.

The Analysis of behavior data usually follows one the paths listed below; other paths are possible.

  1. Start with a list of Exact Match sales
  2. Start with a list of Correlated sales
  3. Start with visitors who did not make a purchase
  4. Start with visitors who arrive from a specific advertisement or search phrase

Popularity Ratings usually includes some of the following:

  1. Generate a list of the most visited and least visited web pages.
  2. Generate a list of the most visited and least visited landing pages.
  3. Generate a list of the most viewed and least viewed product showcase pages.
  4. Generate a list of the most viewed and least viewed product drilldown pages.
  5. Generate a list of the most viewed and least viewed individual products.
  6. Generate a list of the most used and least used product search phrases.

Technical Details

ecVisitorTracking: Visitor session is the key activity tracking for incoming visitors (both customers and non-customers). The ecVisitorTracking data including CTracker is captured in the sendsafe.globalcode.inc.asa file -> logSessionEvent() which is part of the Sub Application_SendSafe_OnStartSession event handler.

ecCustomerTracking: is unused at this time.

If you use application level redirects from one domain name to another ON THE SAME PHYSICAL SITE then you will experience multiple duplicate eventlog entries in the database table. You can eliminate these duplicate entires by using the control variable Application("SActivitySiteLimiter") to limit capturing to a specific website domain name (i.e. www.c-prompt.com).

ecCustomerPBrowse: is captured IF SACtivityPageLevDetail = true. The capture occurs inside the incfile_loader.asp module invoked by the browser.inc.asp module.