If You Use Clickbank, Have You Discovered This Yet? Click Here.

[Emmanuel Betinis]

Many of you probably know by now about the new
"Order Form Impressions" feature of Clickbank
analytics and I'm sure many of you have known
this for quite some time now.

What really surprises me are the number of
"Order Form Impressions" to actual sales.

Yes, I realize some click on the ORDER
button out of curiosity to see how much
it is, but isn't the price usually displayed
before the user clicks ORDER anyway?
What I'm fascinated by here is the psychology
of what's going on here.

This is very interesting information to
me. That is, the high number of
Order Form Impressions when
compared to the number of
completed sales.

NOTE: No, this thread is not
meant to bash Clickbank by
saying "They're stealing my
commissions...what's going
on with Clickbank...etc..."
It's just that I'm intrigued
by how many people
click the order button
out of sheer curiosity...or is it?


-----
Edit: I'm not talking about
the internet marketing niche.

[zapseo]

YES -- it is a REQUIREMENT of CB's that the price MUST be mentioned on the sales page.
(and I'll be the first to admit that people sometimes figure out how to get their product approved without following these rules -- but they are the rules, nonetheless.

People may ALSO clickthru to see if the "affiliate" part of the order is getting filled in correctly. And there's various other sorts of information that is available on the order form that isn't necessarily on the sales page.

Hope that helps.

[MizzCindy]

Yep, I often click through to the sales page to confirm my affiliate ID is showing up properly. Also, if a sales page is so long and convoluted I'd need to be an archeologist to find the price, straight to the order page I go. :-)

Cindy

[Stefan Vee]

Exactly like zapseo said:
Many affiliates check the "expected" affiliate link at the bottom of the form

[mikestenger]

Hmmm...that's an interesting question Emmanuel. I myself like many other CB affiliates, want to make sure our affiliate ID's are showing up but surely, not that many are clicking the order button for that, are they?

I could understand it for high traffic products but I do feel that a lot of it is just pure curiosity on the consumers side.

[Janet Sawyer]

Originally Posted by mikestenger

Hmmm...that's an interesting question Emmanuel. I myself like many other CB affiliates, want to make sure our affiliate ID's are showing up but surely, not that many are clicking the order button for that, are they?

Dang right we are.

So many vendors, start out with clickbank and then decide to transfer to paypal or paydotcom........... robs us who promote their product from our clickbank link.

For every thing, product, whatever I promote through clickbank, I check on a monthly basis that my affiliate code works on the order page. I also check that that vendor hasn't moved away from clickbank, and I also check that my stats are the same as reported by clickbank for their stats.

If they don't match, I ditch.

Perhaps, now, I may check more often like on a weekly basis.

[stoco]

I find it is not just ClickBank. I track both ClickBank and PayPal clickthroughs and find that the non-conversion rate to be about the same. I like the affiliate theory, but am not sure it applies to the PayPal side of the house. But whatever the reason, I am amazed that I get people all the way to the part where they enter the credit card, only to find they abandon the entire process...

[MunkMurray]

the real question to ask is "can we do something about it?"
I have such a lousy "form impressions to sales" conversion rate and it seems totally out of my control

[Alexa Smith]

Originally Posted by Janet Sawyer

Perhaps, now, I may check more often like on a weekly basis.

I think a lot of people do that, actually - or even more often. Especially after some of the publicity Clickbank's had over the last year.

[Janet Sawyer]

Originally Posted by alexa_s

I think a lot of people do that, actually - or even more often. Especially after some of the publicity Clickbank's had over the last year.

Well, to be honest, Alexa, they'd be daft if they didn't.

I'll raise your tracking stats against my tracking stats.........

Funny, how they don't come out the same, going to leave it there, as sometimes it's best to do just that.

[Paul Lear]

I'm sure some people just search for the payment before reading the whole long winded sales letter, because if it's out of their price range they're wasting their time reading it. I know I've done that anyway, I'm sure I'm not alone.

But like some others have said, a lot of affiliates will do it to see if the affiliate id is showing correctly.

Paul.

[Emmanuel Betinis]

Originally Posted by zapseo

People may ALSO clickthru to see if the "affiliate" part
of the order is getting filled in correctly.

I'm not talking about the Internet Marketing niche.

Originally Posted by MizzCindy

Yep, I often click through
to the sales page to confirm my affiliate ID is showing
up properly.

I'm not talking about the Internet Marketing niche.

Originally Posted by Stefan Vee

Many affiliates check the "expected" affiliate link at
the bottom of the form

I'm not talking about the Internet Marketing niche.

Originally Posted by mikestenger

I myself like many other
CB affiliates, want to make sure our affiliate ID's are
showing up but surely, not that many are clicking the
order button for that, are they?

I wouldn't think so.
Especially since I'm not talking about the Internet Marketing niche.

Originally Posted by mikestenger

I could understand it for high traffic products but I do
feel that a lot of it is just pure curiosity on the consumers
side.

This is interesting. Nonetheless, we humans
ARE curious by nature, right? So I "suppose"
we could chalk it up to that. It's just tough
doing that when we don't "really" know if
that's what it is.

Originally Posted by stoco

...whatever the reason, I am
amazed that I get people all the way to the part
where they enter the credit card, only to find they
abandon the entire process...

I know, it amazes me too.
I never thought the majority
of Order Form Impressions
would end up as a non-conversion.

I would have "thought" the majority
of Order Form Impressions would
result in conversions.

Perhaps this goes to show us we should never "just think"
of how or why something might be unless we test
& track the results. And this is what this new
feature of Clickbank's analytics is
doing for us; Testing & tracking a
new factor: The Order Form Impressions.

I look at it as a good thing. I'm always
learning new things in IM (and marketing
in general) and perhaps this just
goes to show some of us as affiliates
that have low Order Form Impression
to Conversion ratios need to do a
better job of pre-selling our prospects.

Originally Posted by MunkMurray

the real question to
ask is "can we do something about it?"
I have such a lousy "form impressions to sales"
conversion rate and it seems totally out of my control

As affiliates, perhaps it is in our control.

Perhaps we need to do a better
job pre-selling. (ie. Are you just
slamming the prospect through
your order link for the sake of
making a sale or are you actually
pre-selling by providing good
valuable information that relates
to solving their problem at hand
(without giving them the WHOLE
solution, of course)?

Originally Posted by Paul Lear

I'm sure some people just
search for the payment before reading the whole long
winded sales letter, because if it's out of their price
range they're wasting their time reading it.

True. But the price IS usually on the sales
page next to the order button without them
having to go to the order form to find out the
price, isn't it?

Originally Posted by Paul Lear

But like some others have said, a lot of affiliates will
do it to see if the affiliate id is showing correctly.

I'm not talking about the Internet Marketing niche.

[MizzCindy]

I'm not talking about the Internet Marketing niche.

Any niche I'm in, I make a point to check the order page of the product on a regular basis to make sure my affiliate ID is showing up correctly. Obviously that won't account for all the impressions, but at least some of them will be caused by that practice.

Cindy

[Emmanuel Betinis]

Originally Posted by MizzCindy

Any niche I'm in, I make a point to check the order page of the product on a regular basis to make sure my affiliate ID is showing up correctly. Obviously that won't account for all the impressions, but at least some of them will be caused by that practice.

A point well considered, Cindy. However, I feel
that is only a crumb of the cookie here...

If you're an affiliate and you check your
ID every day or two, then yes, there is a
significantly high chance that the poor order
form conversion % can be contributed to YOU
checking the form all the time.

However, if you only check your ID
once every week or two (and you're
getting decent traffic), that is not
nearly enough of an explanation to justify
the poor Order Form Conversion in my opinion.

Moreover, on a side note (just popped
into my head), if the Order Form Impression IS
indeed high but the conversion is low,
then doesn't that mean your affiliate
link is working properly anyway (otherwise
the Order Form Impressions wouldn't tally
up)?

[Natraj Jayaraman]

Those order form hits could also be a random "competitor" trying to see what your affiliate ID is.

Some PPC advertisers might find value in knowing that (specially if they want to reverse engineer your campaign).

[Emmanuel Betinis]

Originally Posted by Natraj Jayaraman

Those order form hits could also be a random "competitor" trying to see what your affiliate ID is.

Some PPC advertisers might find value in knowing that (specially if they want to reverse engineer your campaign).

True, Natraj.

Now this is going to get juicy...

Why would a competitor want to know what your Clickbank affiliate ID is?

[JayXtreme]

Question: Why would any of the above responses only be relevant if you were talking about the internet marketing niche?...

Anyways..

Anyone who is surprised by these order form impression stats, clearly hasn't done much tracking and testing before...

I've seen much worse stats from an order form, and I've seen much better....

The thing is... this is completely in your control, improving that particular stat is not a crap-shoot... it's a measured improvement by making your pre-sell stronger.

The better your pre-sell, the happier you will be when you look at that particular stat.

Peace

Jay

[gyar29]

Originally Posted by JayXtreme

Quetion: Why would any of the above responses only be relevant if you were talking about the internet marketing niche?...

Anyways..

Anyone who is surprised by these order form impression stats, clearly hasn't done much tracking and testing before...

I've seen much worse stats from an order form, and I've seen much better....

The thing is... this is completely in your control, improving that particular stat is not a crap-shoot... it's a measured improvement by making your pre-sell stronger.

The better your pre-sell, the happier you will be when you look at that particular stat.

Peace

Jay

What he said.

Gene

[bretski]

I wonder the same thing sometimes but think that it might be preemptive "buyers remorse" that causes some people to go to the checkout page and then not follow though. It's one thing to click on "order now" and another to "pony up" and actually put in the credit card info...there are also some people out there that are still skittish about buying things on the internet...although this has changed a lot in the past five years or so.

I also have noticed a few "order form submits" that don't wind up being sales...like 3-5 a week...I have two this morning. I know that CB says that this is due to someone missing information or fraudulent information in the order form and it kicks them back to the order page...I have to wonder about that one though.

Overall, I like the new analytics. I do miss being able to quickly see stats from the past two days or current day without having to jump through a bunch of hoops...plus I run Firefox without a whole lot of plugins so it will ask me to intall flash every time or cancel...I just don't care a whole lot about the purdy line graph...but that's just me.

I think that CB is a whole lot like the USA....it may not be perfect (and nothing is in this world)...but it's the best thing around!

[Susanrh]

I sometimes click through to the order form because either the price isn't shown on the sales page, or it isn't easy to spot (I often skim through really long pages) and to see what the dollar price converts to in British pounds because a lot can rest on the exchange rate!

Susan

[artwebster]

I've tried to read all the responses but my sight is particularly bad today -

Does nobody think, as I do, that many buyers only take the order form route to find the owner site selling the product? Many people seem to take a delight in going direct and 'cutting out the middle man' even though they pay the same amount.

[Snappinn]

many times when I am on a clickbank product site I just don't see the price anywhere, that is the time I click the order button just to see how much the product is priced and when i have seen that i go away from the site.

I also click the buy button to see if my affiliate ID is displayed

[stoco]

That does explain the lack of purchases on sites without prices, but I don't think it is a universal reason. The products that I am experiencing this with have prices well displayed.

I think in the end, it's just a) a high volume of people that abandon at the last minute, or b) spiders that make it through and don't get tagged as spiders. Looking through my click logs, I see most of them come in without referrer tags, which means they are not in a usual navigation sequence.

But it is interesting to ponder what else could be causing the phenomenon.

[Pnigro]

Originally Posted by JayXtreme

Question: Why would any of the above responses only be relevant if you were talking about the internet marketing niche?...

Anyways..

Anyone who is surprised by these order form impression stats, clearly hasn't done much tracking and testing before...

I've seen much worse stats from an order form, and I've seen much better....

The thing is... this is completely in your control, improving that particular stat is not a crap-shoot... it's a measured improvement by making your pre-sell stronger.

The better your pre-sell, the happier you will be when you look at that particular stat.

Peace

Jay

Yeah but the question is: If people know the price, why would they click on order and NOT buy?

What's the psychology behind this?

It's like going to amazon, adding to cart, and then not buying.

[JayXtreme]

Originally Posted by Pnigro

Yeah but the question is: If people know the price, why would they click on order and NOT buy?

Have you ever studied the consumer purchasing cycle?... tested different factors that can ultimately affect the particular stat being discussed in this thread?

What's the psychology behind this?

There is much psychology behind this, no single right answer..

It's like going to amazon, adding to cart, and then not buying.

That happens ALL the time.. I'm quite surprised you have never done this.. I have personally added stuff to my cart at Amazon and various other online outlets only to abandon the purchase. Sure.... I very often return later to actually make the purchase, but not every time.

Peace

Jay

[jorchav]

Originally Posted by Susanrh

I sometimes click through to the order form because either the price isn't shown on the sales page, or it isn't easy to spot (I often skim through really long pages) and to see what the dollar price converts to in British pounds because a lot can rest on the exchange rate!

Susan

Right. Often the price is hard to find or there is more than one price mentioned, depending on the timing, the deal chosen, etc. I drop down to hit the order button to cut through the B.S. and the blah-blah to see what the bottom line is, what the deal is.

Also if I am interested in maybe selling the product I quickly go to the order page to get the business name of the product, see who is getting paid, know with whom I am dealing, so I can check it out at CB Engine and the CB Marketplace. So it's not a buyer's click, it's a researcher's click.

What is interesting to me in the new stats is the conversion rates of the sales pages. Some are really bad. Just emphasizes that you waste time, effort and money sending click-through traffic to weak sales pages...