Friday, August 22, 2008

Fast Tip Friday: Google Analytics URL Builder

If you are using Google Analytics on your website, it's also helpful to instrument outside links with campaign URLs to better track referrals and purchases.  We use these campaign URLs on all of our email campaigns as a secondary form of tracking since they allow us to know which customers made gifts after clicking on a link in the email and how much their gift was for.  We also use them for unique URLs in print pieces, by creating a short URL and redirecting it through the GA tracking code.  Use their handy URL builder to create your links




Then, you can go into Google Analytics and find your results under Traffic Sources => Campaigns.  In this case, we are looking at the e-commerce screen. 



Using this method will give you much more data to work with when you do your eventual ROI calculations. 

6 comments:

Kyle James said...

You beat me to this post. ;)

Will be handy to link back to this one.

Anonymous said...

How are you doing the short Print URLs and keeping them 508 Compliant?

Karlyn Morissette said...

I'll be honest - 508 compliance was not remotely a consideration. Now sure how using a short URL in a PRINT PIECE and auto-redirecting it wouldn't be 508 compliant though...

Karlyn Morissette said...

Not sure rather...

Unknown said...

Thanks for the URL Builder tip. Where do you enter this URL when tracking search engine 'cpc' clicks? Would appreciate your help.
Thanks, SP itjobcafe.com

Anonymous said...

Well I've found the answer and wanted to share with all: http://www.draftmotif.org/2008/10/making-url-redirects-508-compliant.html

Also, I've got another post on taking your tracking one step farther just in case you are interested in external/co-branded URL redirects (great for tracking partner promotions): http://www.draftmotif.org/2008/10/get-more-by-tracking-url-redirects.html