I’ve seen various questions about tracking PPC. You can do alot with Google Analytics (see goal tracking) but it’s hard to put all the pieces together to see a clear picture. I personally want to know what PPC network (YSM, MSN or AdWords) is coming to the site, but more importantly what keywords are used, and what keywords convert to sales.
I’ve been rolling out various eBay storefronts and trying new things to separate from the pack, and one of my goals was to get a keyword tracker to feed my SID value in my rover code. This could be adjusted and altered to fit your needs, and is basically just shown how to pass the keyword around in your site, and drop that value in the SID.
The first thing I want to do is use a accessible function called getKeyword(). This function is set up to look in the REQUEST object (POST/GET) and see if there is a variable called ‘x’. This ‘x’ variable will hold our keyword as the user visits our site. We’re also checking YSM keyword string. It’s also important to note that you should have Tracking URLs set to ‘On’ via YSM Control Panel.
}
// check yahoo
‘OVKEY’‘OVKEY’‘OVKEY’
Next, I have a navigation file (I’ll exclude it here, since your scenario will differ). Basically, I see if we have a keyword, and if we do I, append it to the navigation URL. If your a BANS users.. this will slightly suck, since you’ll have to dig for the navigation output and add this. Why didn’t they abstract their navigation to file or single function call? Who knows.. but now I’m off topic.
Now, this will carry our keyword as the user navigates through the site. Now we need to pass it to our rover code if they click a auction link. I personally like to cloak all of my eBay links, but for this example, I’ll just show the straight rover code.
On your auction page, you can simply add this code
With SID being passed in rover, we can see what keywords were used to produce sales. Simply click on Reports -> Transaction Reports in CJ. Then click on the day. You’ll see a listing of sales for that day, and your keyword should appear in the SID column. You can then take this data to determine what keywords are converting for you. The keyword that is clicked the most in your PPC stats does not mean that it’s the most converting, so this is a important piece of the PPC puzzle.