Re: UKNM: Re: Banner ads ...

[Sean Phelan]

At 2:17 pm +0100 30/7/98, Nick Gilbert wrote:

>On Thu, 30 Jul 1998, Matteo Berlucchi wrote:

>

>> Alternative web marketing strategies are proving more

>> effective at building quality traffic (newsgroups posting, partnerships,

>> etc.).

>

>Interesting point Matteo. One question though: how can you *prove* that

>newsgroup posting and partnerships are effective? I have done my fair

>share of newsgroup posting, and while I find it a fantastic way to

>increase traffic, I'm not sure how easy it is to prove it works.

>

>Nick Gilbert


Hm; whenever we add a new source of traffic - banner exchange, search-engine

registration service, major partner site, etc - we create a new URL for the

welcome page.  The different URLs all point to the same page, but our traffic

reporting packages count them separately, and we see which initiatives came

close to fullfilling the promises on their glossy brochures/sales pitches

etc. and which did not.


As there are about 100,000 different pages from perhaps 10,000 sites linking

to us, we also use the HTTP_REFERER to track the lower volume sites, and

recognise when they are getting up to the levels that deserve special

treatment such as custom URLs, visits, lavish(?) entertainment etc.


You can track traffic generated by newsgroup postings in this way, though

we don't do it much.  Some browsers will put "news:blah.blah.blah" in the

HTTP_REFERER field when a user clicks on an HREF in your posting. I once

spotted a reference to us in a series of postings in an Australian genealogy

discussion group in this way - something I would never have known about

otherwise (another clue was the sudden burst of emails asking if we had

UK maps from 50, 100 or 150 years ago - definitely a sign that we were

being data-mined by the genealogists :-)


In the early days, we use to create custom directories or host names to

track new traffic, but the problem with this is that people bookmark them,

and then you have to maintain them for eternity.  Now we just have a

custom "welcome" URL which takes users in to the main site. It doesn't

completely ensure that they only bookmark the main site, but it works

well enough.


Cheers

Sean


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Sean Phelan

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