sem

The UTM (Urchin Traffic Monitor) tracking code is used to track traffic source, medium and campaign; and allows a businesses to track conversion funnel from referral site. With an introduction of Google Tag Manager, some folks are unclear how to implement UTM tracking codes into their HTML pages. The following two simple steps will guide you through installing the UTM javascript snippets into your web pages.

1. Add the classic Google Analytics library, ga.js from Google CDN.

Have you tried to customize the Google CSE search box to fit your website theme, and having difficulty implementing it? You're not alone. I've browsed Google CSE documentation for some time, but this information is buried under the hood and took me a while to figure this out. This is a 2-page Search & Results page design. You'll style the form element how ever you wish to design.

Search Box:

Google Analytics uses cookies to keep track of visitors' web statistics. When you install Google Analytics javascript tracking code on your website, cookies are written to your visitors' computers to keep track of their activities on your website. Cookies store visitor's first visit, page views, how long they stayed on your site, entry point, and exit point among others.

Google Adsense is one of the most popular Ad Network you can use to publish advertisements on your website, and start earning income immediately. Depending on impressions (CPM) and click-through-rates (CTR), your Adsense revenue may vary from a few dollars to a few hundreds per day for high traffic websites. Optimizing your Adsense placement could potentially double, or even triple your Ad income if correctly implemented.

Building and running an ecommerce website is not a trivial task. This two part article will discuss how to build a feature-rich ecommerce website, and also cover strategies for promoting your website efficiently.

Part 1. How to build an effective ecommerce web site?

What is PPC?

PPC stands for Pay-Per-Click, and it is the placement of an advertisement on the search engine result pages (SERPs) for a specific keyword phrase in return for specified payment when a visitor clicks on the link. The PPC link is also known as Sponsored Link, and the advertiser pays an agreed (or bid) amount each time a visitor clicks on the link.

CPC Strategy did a study based on the (1) overall traffic driven, (2) conversion rate, (3) Cost of Sale (COS) or Marketing $, (4) CPC Rate, (5) Responsiveness and (6) Merchant tools; and ranked top 10 major comparison shopping engines (CSEs). The data came from 1Q 2009, and from its client base in non-tech industries.

There are more than a dozen shopping comparison engines that a merchant can use to list products for sale. Listing products on CSEs that operate on Cost-Per-Click model is a bit risky if conversion rate is not monitored, as improperly generated feed files could result in wasting a lot of money on advertising products that do not convert. Traffic and conversion analysis are the key in optimizing data feed file for comparison shopping engines.

Nextag is one of the leading shopping comparison engine (CSE) existed since 1999, which offers true price comparison by providing overall price comparison including shipping and tax based on shopper's geographic location. According to Channel Advisor, Nextag held 18.2% market share in June 2010 in the shopping comparison market with over 17 million visitors each month. Research also shows as many as 45% of all shoppers use shopping comparison engines to find a best price before committing to purchase a product.

With Christmas shopping season just around corner, we've examined become.com performance. become.com is a new shopping portal we've just added to our marketing campaign so we are required to look at its performance. In September 2010, we received 1018 clicks from Become and had only 2 sales, resulting about 0.2% conversion rate which is an extremely low conversion rate. We've contacted the become.com, and received a free consultation from them on how we can improve our conversion. Here is the summary of the conference call.