We at ClickBank understand that a critical factor in your success as an affiliate or vendor is receiving and reviewing timely information about your transactions. ClickBank Analytics offers you the ability to interactively produce trend charts by different topics over custom time ranges. Charts and data tables are provided so you can see sales trends and the data that support it all in one glance. Also, the charts can be manipulated in many different ways, allowing you to see the trends you need to manage your business. This guide will provide more details on what is available in this powerful tool.

Topics to Explore

Explore by Stages of a Sale

As an affiliate or vendor active in our ClickBank Marketplace, you are aware that prospects work their way through several stages in the sales process. A prospect may start by clicking on a HopLink from an affiliate. That HopLink may result in the customer visiting the vendor pitch page and then moving on to the ClickBank Order Form.

We refer to this first visit to the order form as an Order Form Impression. Once on the Order Form, the customer may fill in the required fields and click the Pay Now button. This is referred to as an Order Form Submit. If the submitted order form has no errors, passes fraud detection, and is accepted by the payment processor, it becomes a Sale (counted in Gross Sales). After a Sale, the customer may decide to return the product for various reasons. Depending on the action the customer takes, these returns can be processed as either a Refund or a Chargeback. Both refunds and chargebacks are removed from Gross Sales to keep a running tally of Net Sales.

The ClickBank Analytics tool offers you the ability to report on and measure success through these stages of the order process. The stages available to report on are as follows:

Hop: The act of a prospective customer clicking on a HopLink (this does not include clicks received from automated Internet robots, also known as spiders)

Order Form Impression: The act of a prospective customer visiting the ClickBank Order Form (this does not include visits from automated Internet robots)

Order Form Submit: The act of a prospective customer clicking the Pay Now button on the ClickBank Order Form (our reporting will count up to one order form submit per customer visit to the order form)

Gross Sale: A successful customer purchase of a ClickBank product (including rebill purchases)

Initial Sale: A successful customer purchase of a standard product or the first purchase of a recurring billing product

Refund: A return of a customer purchase (including rebill purchases)

Chargeback: A return of a customer purchase initiated by the customer contacting their payment processor (including rebill purchases)

Net Sale:  A customer purchase (Gross Sale) that has not been returned

Additional metrics are also available to measure the success of converting a customer from one stage of the process to the next:

Earnings per Hop: Dollars earned for each Hop that a customer clicked. The metric is calculated by dividing Initial Sales Amount by the Hop Count for a specified time period.

Hops per Order: The number of Hops it takes to generate a sale. The metric is calculated by dividing the Hop Count by the Initial Sales Count.

Hops per Order Form Impression: The number of Hops it takes to get through the vendor pitch page and generate a visit to the ClickBank Order Form. The metric is calculated by dividing the Hop Count by the Order Form Impression Count for a specified time period.

Order Form Sale Conversion: The rate at which a visit to the ClickBank Order Form generates a sale.  The metric is calculated by dividing Initial Sales Count by Order Form Impression Count for a specified time period.

Refund Rate: The rate by which customer sales are returned in the form of a refund. The metric is calculated by dividing Refund Count by Gross Sale Count for a specified time period. Keep in mind that each refund is assigned to the date of the original sale, so the refund rate is an accurate indicator of performance of sales on a given day.

Chargeback Rate: The rate by which customer sales are returned in the form of a chargeback. The metric is calculated by dividing Chargeback Count by Gross Sale Count for a specified time period. Keep in mind each chargeback is assigned to the date of the original sale, so the chargeback rate is an accurate indicator of performance of sales on a given day.

Explore by Attributes of the Sale

There are many attributes for each sale or prospective sale. In order to manage your business with ClickBank as an affiliate or a vendor, you will likely need to explore the success of your products or marketing campaigns by many or all of these sale attributes. The ClickBank analytics tool allows you to explore and view sales trend for these attributes. The available attributes are described below:

Vendor: The nickname of the vendor whose product has been promoted (this is available for affiliates only)

Affiliate: The nickname of the affiliate who promoted the product (this is available for vendors only)

Product: The vendor nickname and product item number promoted

Billing Type: The type of product promoted – Single Sale or Recurring

Customer Country: The customer’s country based on IP Address or the country the customer selected on the Order Form

Customer Province: The name of the province the customer selected on the ClickBank Order Form

Currency: The currency the customer chose to pay in for their purchase

Language: The language assigned to the product sold

Tracking ID:  The tracking code used by affiliates and vendors to classify campaigns for HopLinks (this is now available for both affiliates and vendors)

Category: The ClickBank category and sub-category assigned to the promoted vendor (this is available for affiliates only)

Reporting on these attributes is as simple as selecting them from the left hand navigation menu. You may even drill down into the trends of specific items within each attribute by clicking on the item in the data table. For example, when viewing Gross Sales By Customer Country, if you click on the Australia item in the data table, the trend chart will trend Gross Sales by customers located in Australia.

Compare Stages of the Sale

A further degree of sophistication is provided within our trend charting: comparison charting.  Comparison charting allows a user to chart two metrics over the same time period. For example, say you were viewing Gross Sales by customers located in Australia. This alone is interesting, but you could overlay the Hops received in that same time period and gain insight into the effectiveness of marketing campaigns targeted at Australians. Simply select a different country and now you can have the same insight into any other campaign you are performing at the country level. All of the metrics available in the data table are also available in comparison charting. The control for comparison charting is located above the trend chart in a dropdown menu.

Compare Specified Dates Hour by Hour

Your marketing campaigns may be targeted for specific times in a day. All of the charts we have talked about so far in this guide provide information for a whole day. However, ClickBank is also proud to provide the opportunity to view your information hour by hour. The hourly charting control is located above the trend chart, as a radio button; you may simply toggle the trend chart between daily and hourly. The hourly trend chart provides you the ability to compare any selected day to another selected day hour by hour. Each hour of both days are charted together for simple visual comparison.

For example, you may want to see your sales for today compared to yesterday, or compared to the same day of the week one week ago. This will indicate if your business is performing as expected during a comparable day in the past and will provide the opportunity to learn what marketing or business tactics are performing best for your business.

Saved Reports

Within the analytics tool you have the ability to save any report you have worked to configure. Simply click the Save Report link at the top of the report and name your report. The name will then appear in the left hand menu under the Saved Reports item. If you would like to delete any report, simply click the delete icon next to the report in the menu.

Data Availability

ClickBank understands you run a dynamic business. We are committed to providing your information in a timely manner. Your data will be refreshed multiple times per day. You can always view the last time your analytics data was updated by looking underneath the left hand navigation at the Data Last Updated box. It contains the date and time your data was last refreshed.

Daily information for your account will be available within our reports for 120 days, and hourly data will be available for 40 days.*

*December 20, 2009 is the first day data was collected for Categories. The full 120 days will not be available for categories until April 2010.

FAQs

Q:  Why does my number of Order Form Submits not match my Gross Sale Count?

A: There are several reasons that an order form submit may not turn into an order including (1) the customer didn’t enter all the fields correctly and (2) the customer’s method of payment was declined. When a customer doesn’t enter the fields correctly, which happens more often, our order form is designed to help customers to enter the correct information as efficiently as possible.

Q:  What happened to my trend chart?

A: A trend chart may be hidden from clicking on the Hide Chart link in the upper right of the page.  Simply click the Show Chart link to reverse this action.

Q:  Why is my Gross Sale Count higher than my Order Form Submit Count? How is this possible?

A: This issue has been resolved as of October 26, 2009. A new field has been introduced, Initial Sales, that will allow you to view sales that came from the order form only. Initial Sales excludes all rebills. Subscription sales have a recurring billing element that initiates a sale without the customer visiting the ClickBank order form at each recurring time period. For example, a monthly recurring product sold on June 1 required a customer to purchase through the ClickBank order form on June 1. However, on July 1, the customer is automatically billed without visiting the ClickBank order form. For a selected time period, an account may have more recurring billing sales than new sales requiring a visit to the order form.

Q:  Why am I seeing improper Customer Countries in my reports?

A: In certain instances, a Customer Country is determined by the IP address the customer is using. Each IP address belongs to a country, or in some cases, a Satellite Provider, or a generic region like Europe or Asia Pacific or Anonymous. However, most IP addresses are assigned to a country.

Q:  What is an automated Internet robot and how does it impact my Hop and Order Form Impression data?

A: An automated Internet robot (also commonly known as a spider) is a piece of software that requests a webpage from the Internet (not a human user). Many search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing, and thousands of others) use automated Internet robots to index the entire Web for the purpose of providing users an enhanced searching experience. At ClickBank, we have decided to filter these automated visits from our reporting so our users can get a clearer picture of human traffic generated from their business efforts.

Q:  Why is my sale not showing in the Analytics tool?

A: Please check the Last Updated Data box on the left hand side of the reporting page. This will provide you with when your information was last loaded into the Analytics tool. The sale you are looking for may be too recent to be available at this time.

Q:  Why will the trend chart not display the selected time period?

A: You are required to select a time period and then click the Go button in order to change the time period.

Q:  Why do the Original Analytics metrics not match the new Analytics tool?

A: Original Analytics and New Analytics do not collect data on the same schedule and will likely not be in sync with each other; they also compute Hop traffic differently (see question above regarding automated Internet robots).

Q: Why did my Net Sales data change since the last time I ran the report?

A: Net Sales may change because of recent refunds or chargebacks that are now included in the timeframe you selected.

Q: Why are my sales totals by category greater than by product?

A: December 20, 2009 is the first day data was collected for Categories.  Therefore if you compare Category sales totals against Product sales, they may be different because of this fact.