New Analytics in Depth – Exploring Sales Funnel Metrics: Part 1
August 31st, 2009
Posted by: Che Horder, Business Intelligence Manager
This is part one of a five-part, five-day series about how to best take advantage of ClickBank’s new analytics reporting.
The new ClickBank Analytics feature has been available for a few weeks now, and we would like to follow up with ideas on how to explore and utilize some of new metrics that are now available to you.
As you know, optimizing the conversion of prospective customers into completed sales is key to your success as a ClickBank affiliate or vendor. The new analytics offer more insight into this process than you have previously had. The process of sales through ClickBank flow through the following stages:
- Stage 1 – Hop: Prospect clicks on HopLink and is taken to vendor Pitch Page
- Stage 2 – Order Form Impression: Prospect views order form
- Stage 3 – Order Form Submit: Prospect submits order form
- Stage 4 – Sale: A sale/order is successfully processed
At each stage of the sales process, your prospective customer chooses to continue or exit the process. To maximize successful conversion from prospect to sale, you must minimize the number of customers that exit the process along the way. The metrics introduced are intended to inform you of where prospective customers are exiting the process so you can improve the tactics you employ to convert prospects into sales.
Over these five posts, we will explore various ways to measure conversion from one stage of the sale process to another, beginning with measuring the full process from Stage 1 to Stage 4.
Hops per Order: Measure the Full Process (Stage 1 to Stage 4)
The Hops per Order metric will tell you how successful your prospects at the Hop stage are in converting through the full process to the Sale stage.
For a prospect to successfully make it to the Sale stage, the following must have occurred:
- A valid, properly formatted HopLink is clicked on
- A vendor pitch page is rendered on the web browser
- A customer decides to proceed with purchasing the product, following a link to the order form
- A valid, properly formatted link to the ClickBank Order Form is clicked on
- The ClickBank Order Form page is rendered on the web browser
- The customer clicked the Pay Now button on the ClickBank Order Form
- The customer information from the ClickBank Order Form is validated
- The customer is verified to not be participating in fraudulent activities
- The customer has the funds to fulfill the sale transaction requested
You can explore this metric either in a trend chart or view it in the data table. To create a chart of the metric, locate the Data Type selection box and choose Hops. Then locate the View selection box and choose Hops Per Order. The metric will be displayed on the trend chart for the timeframe you choose. The metric is also available to view in the data table located below the trend chart. The data table allows you to view the metric by a specific attribute of the sale and in total over a specified time period. For example, you can choose to view Hops per Order for a specific country or product.
If your Hops per Order is 100, that means on average it takes 100 prospects at the Hop stage to have 1 prospect successfully reach the Sale stage. The lower the metric, the more efficiently you are converting prospects from the Hop stage to the Sale stage. You may use the trend chart feature to find time periods when your Hops per Order is lowest, and then correlate that metric to specific marketing tactics that work well.
Check back tomorrow for information about Order Form Sale Conversion (measuring stage 2 to stage 4).
About Beau BlackwellBeau is the Client Knowledge Guru for ClickBank and covers the latest trends, tips and techniques for building profitable Internet marketing businesses.
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Comparing clicks to order form impressions lets one know how many prospects are getting to the order page and past the list building requests on the page which they are not paid for. Hops is not very accurate yet but much better than the old method. Hops still happen when ads are not running or when under review.
Comparing order form impressions to submits and sales lets us know how successful the vendors sales page and order page are.There are still problems with the update times though. Sept 1/09 doesn’t seem to show past yesterday at 8/31/09 11:59 AM PT. It is currently about 9/1/09 9:25 AM PT.
Need to have a grouping by three pieces of information, vendor, product & tracking code as all 3 together to provide the sales data required. Seperately we bounce around more to figure out the required info. Spending our advetising $ better thru better info, improves $ for all involved. Affiliate, vendor, host and prospect. Resulting in better targeting.
Tying the new analytics into improving the affiliates ability to track advertising to sales is a desirable goal. Any additional steps can only lead to overall improvement.
Why is all this info directed to affiliates, as if it didn’t also pertain to vendors? Vendors use the analytics too! Don’t forget us!