Best way to track squeeze pages? Google Analytics?

14 replies
Hi, there,

I haven't done any tracking before and if anyone has any advice, I'd appreciate it wholeheartedly.

I'm setting up squeeze pages to drive articles and traffic to, and obviosuly the better I can track the sources, the better I can channel my energies.

I know that my hosting account comes with stats, and there's Google Analytics.

Should I use G/A on each squeeze page? Is that better than just using the hosting provider's stats? Will G/A cause a browser warning as to scripts on the page being potentially "unsafe"?

Thanks for any input or guidance,

- Paul
#analytics #google #pages #squeeze #track
  • Profile picture of the author nikolaaa
    Check Google Analytics Goals and adtrackz script
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[1615950].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author Steven Wagenheim
      Paul, if you're looking for a free solution, Google Analytics will work just fine.

      I use it and it gives me all the info that I personally need. For some, this may
      be too basic. For a paid solution, since I don't use them, I can only go by
      what other people have suggested to me and that would be AdTrackz.

      But I think GA will be fine for your purposes if you're just looking for simple
      click tracking.
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[1616071].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author createrk
    google analytics all the way...
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[1616090].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author TheAngelGuy
    Thanks much, everyone.

    So GA even on a squeeze page is worth doing then, right?

    I'm an affiliate so I think this is as far as I can track, but I'm just starting to put all of my learning into action, so it's probably going to become more obvious as I do it.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[1616127].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author Steven Wagenheim
      Originally Posted by TheAngelGuy View Post

      Thanks much, everyone.

      So GA even on a squeeze page is worth doing then, right?

      I'm an affiliate so I think this is as far as I can track, but I'm just starting to put all of my learning into action, so it's probably going to become more obvious as I do it.
      Every single page you have should be tracked.

      Look at it this way.

      If you are using more than one type of promotion and they are all either
      labor intensive or monetarily costly, don't you want to see where your time
      and/or money is best invested?

      Let's say you get traffic from 3 sources.

      PPC
      Articles
      Forums

      And from your tracking you find the following percentages.

      PPC - 25%
      Articles - 60%
      Forums - 15%

      And you then figure out that even though articles make up 60% of your
      clicks, 50% of your income is coming from PPC...doesn't it make more sense
      to put more money into PPC then time into articles?

      I'm just using this as a hypothetical example.

      And we can further break down the articles to:

      Ezine Articles
      GoArticles
      Articlebase

      And if we discover that most of our traffic comes from Ezine Articles with
      very little, if any at all coming from the other 2 or however many directories
      you submit to, doesn't it makes sense, if you decide to continue article
      marketing, to at least concentrate on the directories that bring results?

      The only way to do this is with tracking. And if you're sending people to
      squeeze pages, then yes, you should be tracking your squeeze pages.

      Improper tracking, or lack of it altogether, is one of the biggest mistakes
      that people make. They end up wasting time on activities that don't
      produce results.

      Anyway, hope this helps.
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[1616177].message }}
      • Profile picture of the author StephenChapman
        Google Analytics works well, but I'm partial to Statcounter as there are some unique ways to drive down statistics that Google Analytics won't. Do some comparisons between the two to see what you think. It's straightforward and I would be happy to answer any questions you might have about Statcounter if you needed help.

        -Stephen
        {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[1616193].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author MikeHumphreys
      Paul,

      I recommend you get Paul Hancox's ebook/manual Small Changes, Big Profits to get more familiar with online testing.

      Originally Posted by TheAngelGuy View Post


      I'm an affiliate so I think this is as far as I can track, but I'm just starting to put all of my learning into action, so it's probably going to become more obvious as I do it.
      It depends. In simple layman terms, you'll need two webpages to put your testing tags. One tag will go on the page where you're running your test... in this case, your squeeze page. If it was your own product, the second tag would go on your thank you page.

      Since the product owner isn't going to let you put the second tag on their site, you have to direct squeeze page opt-ins to your own page where you have the tag and then redirect them from there. At least, that's what you'll have to do to get accurate testing.

      Google's tool has a lot of features and is popular because it's free. The minute they decide to make their shareholders more money by making it a monthly paid tool, my prediction is there will be thousands of marketers who drop it in a hurry.

      Of course, you're sharing your testing data with the same company who is selling you pay-per-click advertising.

      One of the top reasons I have always used a paid testing script is that I don't want to share my testing data or sales conversion data with any other business or company. I eventually had my own multi-variate testing script built called Easy Multi Tracking and that's all I use.

      If I decide to share something that I've found is converting well, then it's by MY choice, not someone else's. I am definitely not sharing my conversion data with the same company that I'm buying PPC from. It's real easy for them to bump my prices without proof.

      Hope that helps,

      Mike
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[1620154].message }}
      • Profile picture of the author flordan
        Does anyone know how to track sales conversions when you are using more than 1 domain for a bunch of related product?

        For example, if I have a blog and 3 domains, and someone comes to the blog first, if I just use the google analytics code on my blog, it will show a referrer for the keyword the person used to the blog.

        If someone then buys a product on another of my domains, the referrer will be shown to be my blog, but i want ot to be the original keyword that brought them to any one of the related sites.

        On my shoppingcart thank you page it is integrated with google analytics but i am allowed to only enter 1 GA UA account number, this is what is confusing me.
        {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[1778908].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author TheAngelGuy
    Thanks to both "Steves" for the insight and direction.

    Does either of those two - Google Analytics or Statcounter - force one of those IE "danger" message bars to come up, announcing to the end-user that there is a "potentially dangerous script" in the page?

    That would kind of make them second-guess wanting to stay on-page, no?

    It might be a non-issue...
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[1616345].message }}
  • I never use Google Analytics to measure squeeze page conversions. I have it there to track the pages like all the other pages on any site I have, but I use Google Website Optimizer to track squeeze page conversions. It's easier and it's designed to tell you exactly what you want to know.

    http://www.google.com/websiteoptimizer
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[1619929].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Istvan Horvath
    Strange thing about GA: I have a site that I didn't check for about a month and this morning it says I had 0 (zero) visitors. Yes, the code is there in the right place.

    Checked the same site on the host server with Awstats and a totally different story - the traffic is the same as it was for the previous months...
    Signature

    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[1619955].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author TheRichJerksNet
    It's amazing how many will suggest using google stats when it is a known fact that many times those stats take several minutes to load. You visitor is not going to wait around when they see "Loading Google Analytics" in the browser bar.

    So while you are tracking you are also losing sales / visitors. It never fails many times google stats take time to load and you only have 3 - 4 seconds to impress that visitor before they get bored.

    James
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[1779411].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author bdegrossa
      Is anyone using Hypertracker? I've heard that Perry Marshall (adwords guru) uses it. If you use it instead of GA, what are the advantages?

      Thanks,

      B.
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[1779432].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Niche-Dominator
    GA is my preffered choice and works just fine for me, best of luck!
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[1779560].message }}

Trending Topics