Posted by: Che Horder, Business Intelligence Manager

This is part three of a five-part, five day series about how to best take advantage of the new analytics.

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. Part 1 of this series details what the different stages represent and how to measure the full process from Stage 1 to Stage 4. Part 2 outlines Order Form Sale Conversion. Today’s post deals with measuring Hops per Order Form.

Hops per Order Form Impression: Stage 1 to Stage 2

The Hops per Order Form Impression metric tells you how successful your prospects at the Hop stage are at converting to the Order Form Impression stage. If your Hops per Order Form Impression is 12, that means on average it takes 12 prospects at the Hop stage to have 1 prospect successfully reach the ClickBank Order Form. The lower the metric, the more efficiently you are converting prospects from the Hop stage to the Order Form Impression stage. You may use the trend chart feature to find time periods when your Hops per Order Form Impression is lowest, and then correlate that metric to specific marketing tactics that work well.

For a prospect to successfully make it to the Order Form Impression 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

This metric is available to create a trend chart or view in the data table. To create a chart utilizing the metric, locate the Data Type selection box and choose Hops. Then locate the View selection box and choose Hops Per Order Form Impression. 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 Form Impression for a specific country or product.

Check back tomorrow for information about order form impression count vs. order form submit count.

Take a look at these related posts:

1. New Analytics in Depth – Exploring Sales Funnel Metrics: Part 1
2. New Analytics in Depth – Exploring Sales Funnel Metrics: Part 4
3. New Analytics in Depth – Exploring Sales Funnel Metrics: Part 5

Posted by: Beau Blackwell, Community Manager

Earlier this week, we released several major improvements to our system that will help both vendors and affiliates grow and improve their businesses. In case you missed them, here’s a recap of what we released.

Help Center

You’ve probably already seen the new Help Center tab on the right-hand side of our navigation bar, but if not, be sure to check it out! The Help Center contains many new articles for both affiliates and vendors, covering everything from creating a ClickBank account to attracting more affiliates and learning about common ways to promote products. It’s a great place to look for any information you need about being more successful as a ClickBank client.

New & Improved Client Analytics

We’ve made major improvements to our Client Analytics, allowing you to see more detail than ever about your sales and promotions. Our improved Client Analytics lets you look at trends, order form impressions data, reporting by various dimensions like geographic location, and more.

To view the new Client Analytics, log in to your account and click the Reporting tab. Then click Analytics NEW! on the right side of the subnav:

To read more about all the features Client Analytics has to offer, and how to use it, see our Help Center article.

Integrated Sales Reporting

Clients can now track successful orders (conversions) by linking the ClickBank order process to Google Analytics, Google AdWords, and Yahoo Search Marketing, giving you more information about sales and the effectiveness of promotional efforts than ever before.

Read more about Integrated Sales Reporting in the Help Center.

ClickBank API

The ClickBank API makes it possible for a wide range of computer programs to securely access ClickBank account information on behalf of ClickBank account owners. Some of the functions available to users of the API include the ability to:

• Request a refund for a customer’s purchase
• Request a cancelation for a customer’s subscription
• Retrieve a list of transactions in a ClickBank account for a given timeframe

Read more about the ClickBank API in the Help Center.

Take a look at these related posts:

1. Coming Soon: Enhanced Reporting Analytics
2. Pilot Participants Wanted for New ClickBank Reporting Feature
3. ClickBank Data and Outside Analytics

Posted by: Jeff Leget, Director of IT Operations

Some ClickBank clients have raised concerns that the traffic and clicks that they see in external analytics applications such as Google and Yahoo Analytics sometimes don’t match their ClickBank Hop analytics or sales numbers.

Affiliate-driven sales account for the vast majority of ClickBank’s sales, and we are completely committed to making Hop tracking as accurate as possible. ClickBank will soon release new functionality that will allow you to integrate Google and Yahoo Analytics into the ClickBank Hop and sales cycle. This will give our clients complete visibility into the ways in which affiliate promotions translate to Hops, order form visits, and eventually completed sales.

Since the Vendor Thank You page is the last destination for a ClickBank consumer following a purchase, it would seem as though comparing the number of completed sales to the number of visits to the Thank You page would be relatively straightforward. However, I’ll share with you a number of different ways by which traffic can reach this page, demonstrating why this comparison can sometimes be inaccurate.

1.       ClickBank Sales: The most obvious and rewarding way in which traffic lands on a Vendor Thank You page is via a successful ClickBank sale. As mentioned on our Vendor Tools page, ClickBank will always pass nine query string parameters to the Thank You page. These parameters indicate that the visitor has placed an authentic ClickBank order.

2.       Robots: Search engines spider websites to improve search capabilities. The Thank You page should never be scanned by search engines. The Vendor should always add the META tag described in our Vendor Tools to prevent robots from adding the Thank You page to a search engine list.

3.       Customer Bookmarks: A ClickBank customer can always bookmark the Thank You page. Once bookmarked, they can visit the Thank You page as many times as they like.

4.       GOTO link in the receipt email: When a customer makes a purchase, ClickBank sends them a receipt email that includes a GOTO link to the Thank You page. This GOTO link is only valid for 14 days after the sale is made. It contains an encrypted identifier that ClickBank verifies and ties back to the original Thank You page URL given to the customer at the time of sale. A customer is allowed to visit the Thank You page via this GOTO link as many times as they want within that 14-day window.

5.       ClickBank Customer Service: In some cases, ClickBank can provide a customer with the original Thank You page URL and parameters. This is done in cases where sending the customer the Thank You page URL will keep them from requesting a refund, such as if they were unable to download the product immediately after purchase. This is typically only done within the 60-day refund period.

So how can you, the vendor, better protect your Thank You page and get more accurate traffic statistics? ClickBank provides multiple ways to protect the Thank You page in our Vendor Tools. Here are a few highlights:

1.       A Thank You page should always be a script-based page, such as PHP, ASP, Perl, etc. A scripted page can read and evaluate the parameters that ClickBank passes. The Thank You page can easily be scripted to only permit visitors that have valid ClickBank parameters, like the ClickBank receipt.

2.       A Thank You page should always be protected by the ClickBank Link Security Script and a Secret Key. ClickBank provides code examples on the Vendor Tools page that show how a scripted page can verify the ClickBank Proof of Purchase (CBPOP) value. The Thank You page can then be scripted to only permit visitors that have a valid CBPOP value. It is worth mentioning that less than 2% of registered ClickBank vendors use a Secret Key. However, for sales on any given day, over 50% of the sites that make a sale use a Secret Key. The lesson here is that the most successful ClickBank vendors protect their product using the ClickBank Secret Key and CBPOP.

3.       Check the time. ClickBank passes the time of the original sale in computer epoch time (seconds since 1970). A scripted Thank You page can easily verify that the order occurred within a given number of days. The Thank You page can then be scripted to only permit visitors within a specific number of days since the original sale. This prevents people from accessing the Thank You page URL via bookmarking or sharing.

4.       Script and log the visitor data. Once your scripted Thank You page has filtered out robots and unverified visitors, you can now accurately track unique visitors by logging the receipt number. Obviously, some consumers will download a product twice if they have problems, but a scripted Thank You page will allow you to match unique visitors with unique sales.

I hope this helps demystify the occasional inconsistencies between ClickBank sales numbers and Thank You page visits. The new ClickBank integration with third-party analytics programs should help even more. Look for it in the near future.

Take a look at these related posts:

1. New Analytics in Depth – Exploring Sales Funnel Metrics: Part 1
2. The Power of Data
3. New Analytics in Depth – Exploring Sales Funnel Metrics: Part 2

Posted by: Michael Poston, Product Manager

As a rule of thumb, you should gather competitive intelligence (CI) for your business. Doing so will allow you to better understand current and potential competitors, industry trends, and possible threats. As a result, you will be empowered to make more informed decisions about your product and strategic initiatives.

To do this effectively, you should implement a process designed to filter large volumes of data into clear and actionable insight. For instance, using a RSS parser such as Jawfish to receive, organize, and redistribute feed content can automate CI data mining and distribution. Simply take the repurposed RSS feed content and display it on an intranet or wiki page, and voila, you have a CI portal.

Similarly, you can use Web page monitoring tools to ensure you are “in the know” regarding your competitors’ activities. For example, you can use a tool like TrackEngine, InfoMinder, or WatchThatPage to notify you every time your competitors’ news or press release pages are updated. Review the content as you are notified, identify if it is significant, and redistribute within your company as necessary.

Lastly, use tools like Twitturly or Twitterfox to easily monitor popular links being tweeted for subjects related to your competitors, your industry, or possible threats to your business. Doing so will give you nearly real-time visibility into their activities and the community’s response to it. You can also use the tool Tweet Scan to get emailed updates on tweets for particular keywords. It delivers information less frequently than the other tools, but can be good for receiving summaries if you don’t have a lot of time to monitor the other tools.

In conclusion, the Internet has changed the meaning of “readily available information.” If you haven’t already, you need to leverage tools like these to help you capture this information and organize it in a fashion that makes sense for your business. Taking the time to do so will lead to greater success.

Happy selling, friends!

Please note that all applications mentioned in this post are not affiliated with ClickBank and should be used at your own risk.

Take a look at these related posts:

1. Testing, Testing…
2. Choosing the Best Keywords to Promote ClickBank Products Using Search Engines

Posted by: Shelly Spafford, Senior Customer Service Representative

Most affiliates understand the need to run effective promotions in order to make sales. However, many affiliates may not understand how the information they can gain through the use of Tracking IDs can help them promote products more successfully. In this post, I’ll explain what they are and how they can be a huge help to your business.

Tracking IDs are codes you create of up to eight alpha-numeric digits that are added to the end of your Hoplinks, like this: http://affiliate.publisher.hop.clickbank.net/?tid=zzzzzzzz. In this example link, ‘zzzzzzzz’ is your custom Tracking ID. This ID can be anything you want, and it allows you to decipher which of your advertisements or promotions are the most successful.

I’ll give you an example: I am an affiliate with the nickname ‘nick’ and I am promoting a product whose publisher has the nickname ‘name’. I want to run a variety of ads in different locations for this publisher and I want to see which one is the most successful. Let’s say I am going to run an ad on the Web sites www.fakesite.com, www.unreal.com, and www.pretend.com; I only need to add Tracking IDs to the end of my Hoplink to be able to track the results from each Web site. The resulting Hoplinks, with tracking IDs corresponding to the Web sites above, would look like this:

http://nick.name.hop.clickbank.net/?tid=fakesite
http://nick.name.hop.clickbank.net/?tid=unreal
http://nick.name.hop.clickbank.net/?tid=pretend

In my account, on the Analytics page under the Reporting tab, I can see how each advertisement is doing. I can conduct a search by going to the Affiliate Reporting section on the Analytics page, choosing Tracking Codes in the “Report By” field, and a time period of my choice in the Period field. It’s important to note that the Analytics page only reports up to 30 days of Hoplink activity. When I click Go, I can see each of my Tracking Codes in the far left column, titled Code.  I can then see the following information, pertaining to the links I created above: Code, #Hops, #Sales, #Refunds, etc.

If I see that the code ‘unreal’ is creating many hops and sales, and that the code ‘fakesite’ is not creating many at all, I’ll know that the advertisement on the Web site www.fakesite.com is not doing well. I can then choose to put more focus and advertising resources into the www.unreal.com advertisement.

You can even run a variety of ads on the same site, and see what phrases or types of ads work best for each product. For example, if I want to run two differently-worded ads on www.fakesite.com, I can use the Tracking Codes ‘fakest01′ and ‘fakest02′.

Tracking codes enable you to understand your Hoplink activity, analyze your promotional efforts, and ultimately save money by not continually spending that money on advertisements that are not working well.

For more information about adding a Tracking Code to your Hoplinks, please visit:

http://www.clickbank.com/hoplink_faq.html#hoplink_question_3

No related posts.

Posted by: Beau Blackwell, Marketing Coordinator

Many of our product publishers and affiliates turn to Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising, such as Google Adwords, to help drive quality traffic to their sites. While there are many ways to improve the performance of PPC advertising, one of the most useful, but occasionally overlooked, methods is a technique called daypart bidding.

Daypart bidding, also known as Ad Scheduling in Google Adwords, is a tool that is offered by both Google and MSN’s AdCenter. It allows you to adjust your bids in a particular PPC advertising campaign, based both on the day of the week and the time of day. You can turn off campaigns completely, or boost your bid to double your normal bid or more. It’s quick and easy to use, and gives you a great deal of control over your advertising.

While this technique can be especially useful for businesses with specific operating hours, it can also be very advantageous for online-only businesses like ClickBank clients. Since ClickBank reports the time of day of every sale, it can be helpful to analyze what days and times deliver the most value for you, and then adjust your advertising bids accordingly. For some people, this may be during normal business hours, but depending on the product it could be late at night or on the weekend.

Once you’ve identified your “prime time,” you can adjust your bids to make sure your product or site is getting maximum exposure at that time. Likewise, if there’s a particular day or time that your site just can’t seem to convert, you can turn down your bids during those times to save your advertising budget for more effective periods.

One great thing about daypart bidding is that you can make use of it even if you don’t have any kind of Web site analytics installed. All you need are the PPC advertiser’s traffic reporting and ClickBank’s sales reporting to start improving your advertising efforts and getting the most return on your investment. To achieve the biggest improvements, though, you should combine ClickBank’s reporting with Web site analytics and testing to get a complete picture of your site’s traffic and sales.

If you haven’t already tried daypart bidding, give it a shot and see how much more you can get out of your budget!

Take a look at these related posts:

1. Strategy for Success: Create a Privacy Policy
2. New Advertising Opportunities for Publishers
3. Testing, Testing…

Posted by: Greg Lems, Director of Application Development

Here’s a riddle: What travels at the speed of light, takes up virtually no space, and changes constantly, yet is vitally important to ClickBank publishers and affiliates? Data!

The key to being effective as a ClickBank affiliate or publisher is having the knowledge of how one’s efforts to attract and convert customers are faring. Data is the key to this knowledge. In recent months, ClickBank has built functionality to help our clients receive data that is vital to their success as publishers and affiliates.

Starting last year, ClickBank made the “tracking ID” (or TID) functionality available to affiliates. This allows affiliates to pass parameters via their Hoplinks that show up at order time, enabling them to track anything they are interested in. Keywords, campaign names, anything that affiliates adjust to try to improve performance can be recorded in the TID and analyzed after orders have been placed.

ClickBank Analytics (available on the “Reporting” tab of your account) takes TIDs and many other factors into account to provide important data to affiliates. It shows how many Hoplinks have been attributed to an affiliate’s account, and also how many sales have occurred. Affiliates can view this data by publisher, to see which of the publishers they promote have the highest conversion rates. They can also view this data by hour or TID. All data is also downloadable by CSV (comma-separated values) for use in analysis tools or charting packages, such as MS Excel.

Additionally, ClickBank Analytics is useful to publishers as well. They can see how well their pitch pages convert, even breaking performance out by affiliate or hour of day.

Another new data-related feature we recently introduced is instant payment notification (IPN). If you choose to enable it, ClickBank will notify your server on a near real-time basis of every transaction event you were involved in, either as a publisher or affiliate. Programmers can write code to receive ClickBank IPNs and create a whole host of functionality, such as a running total of sales for the day or other dashboard features.

In upcoming releases we plan to build upon the data-related functionality we offer. One feature that has been frequently requested is charting or other graphical functionality on the analytics page. We look forward to hearing more from our community about your data-related needs.

As Director of Application Development for ClickBank, I’m keenly aware that there’s a world of programming opportunities available to our clients who want to analyze their ClickBank data. My job is to make sure people can access it and make good use of it. In upcoming posts, I’ll discuss tips and tricks that programmers can use to interface more closely with ClickBank systems.

Take a look at these related posts:

1. ClickBank Data and Outside Analytics
2. Programmatically Accessing Data from ClickBank.com
3. Operate in Real Time with the ClickBank API