Tracking Your E-Commerce Customers Through URL Codes

By DoItYourself.com Staff

One common request of the Internet store owners is the site's ability to have a customer click a URL in an e-mail that contains a marketing code, and then track that code through to the customer's purchase.

By attaching the code from the e-mail to the final order, you can easily determine how many of the e-mails resulted in a sale. Similarly, knowing how many customers clicked the link without making a purchase is important - the difference between the two figures is your conversion ratio. A high conversion ratio means most of the people that clicked the link bought something; a low ratio means most did not. Creating a "path" for your customers - in other words, tracking which pages they looked at while on your site - is also useful. This enables your marketing department to determine what parts of the site are engaging and successful in converting shoppers into buyers.

This type of tracking can be extremely database intensive; a common tactic is to randomly select a small portion of your incoming shoppers and track a path for them, rather than attempting to track a path for every shopper who visits the site. Because most platforms do not provide for this type of functionality, you'll either have to program it yourself or purchase a third-party suite for the task.

Tracking Customer Sales of an Internet Store

Another common request is the site's ability to report on statistics for repeat buyers.

• How many of your buyers make a second purchase?
• How long do they wait between purchases?
• What is their average purchase size - both in units purchased and dollars spent?
• How many of them make a third, or even fourth, purchase?
• How many make purchases only when lured in with a coupon?

Your server's default database schema makes collecting this type of data possible, although the table joins required to do so can be complex.

Tracking Gift Programs of Your E-Commerce Web Site

If your company utilized coupons or other discounts, your marketing department will want to know how effective they were.

• How many coupons were issued?
• How many were actually used?
• What was the average order amount?
• How many coupon users were first-time buyers?
• How many were repeat buyers?

This type of information will be requested every time a coupon is used, so you would do well to create an interface that enables your marketing department to check the data without having to request IT assistance. The default Commerce Server database schemas generally make this information available, although the queries can be somewhat complex depending on the specific information needed.
Metrics and statistics play a crucial role in the progress, growth and future expansion of your e-commerce and business interests. Tracking, collecting and analyzing the data for various attributes and aspects is a major and mandatory task, and never ever under-estimate its importance.

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