So if you’re like me, you’ve been obsessively tracking folks through your website using Google Analytics, using the information on what the visitor paths are (home page -> trial explanation -> trial download -> purchase), what the high value paths are (anybody who clicks to read my license terms has a 50-50 shot of buying from me), and whatnot. If you identify problems doing this (such as “Hmm, nobody who clicks on a screenshot ever comes back”), you’ve fixed them. But you probably aren’t tracking people leaving your site, for example to go to an offsite payment processor, like Paypal.
Well, you should, and its really easy to accomplish.
You need to manually edit all of your links offsite to include the text
onclick="urchinTracker('/local/path/example');
where local path example is a non-existent web page on your site. Google will report someone who clicks on that link as visiting the page /local/path/example, just as if they had visited a page with that name on your site. I use /paypal/purchasing.htm/top-corner-button, for example, which tells me that somebody clicked on a link to Paypal from purchashing.htm on the top corner button. This lets me see what part of purchasing.htm is really motivating people — in my case, its NOT the top-corner button (who knew! I always expected folks would go for the easiest button to reach). but rather the part later on in the text where I describe Paypal as a safe, secure place to shop online. I guess I understand why Paypal trumpets that so much in their marketing now! My takeaway lesson from this is that my customers are a bit hesitant to give over their credit card number to somebody they’ve never met before, which fits my mental profile of them, and that I could probably increase conversions by stressing how safe and secure it is to buy through Paypal earlier on the page. I’m going to do that and see how it pans out.
Anyhow, tagging your outbound links only takes a few seconds per link, and you can learn valuable stuff about your customers’ behavior. I recommend that everyone does it, most especially to links that are in your conversion pathway.
I have not had the time to devote to Bingo Card Creator that I would have liked for several weeks now, so I’m largely operating it like a vending machine — I collect the change at the end of the week and, once and a while, write out a two-paragraph email to somebody with a question. My sales for the month of November have been rather limp (10 so far at the moment, roughly 1/3 off my comparable stats from October and significantly under my goal), largely due to both ceasing all active promotion and not fixing problem with current promotions. I hope to fix that after I get a wee bit less busy with the job/real life, and I also hope to get version 1.05 shipped at some point, hopefully in the first week of December or so. Christmas parties seem to be a good opportunity to play bingo, right?
Payloadz just announced that they are rolling out a service to sell downloads through Google Checkout. That might be of interest to some uISVers, particularly those who are just starting out and have maximum flexibility with choosing a payment provider. If anyone ends up using it, please, tell us how it went down.
I, for one, will be sticking with e-junkie/Paypal. I’ve used Payloadz in the past and, while I’m sure they are an excellent service for some people, they aren’t quite right for me. Their payment structure is tiered based on sales, and the tiers compare very disfavorably to e-junkie’s flat $5 a month payment. (Example: $15 if you sell $100 to $499.99, $29 if you sell $500 to $999.99). Thats a bit more money, and potentially quite a bit more money, for a service which does not justify the price differential to my point of view. In any given month, I’m right around that $500 level, and getting whalloped for $29 for what I can get for $5 doesn’t strike me as a great deal. Even if you count the $1.02 I’d save per Paypal transaction (my current spending on AdWords means Checkout would be free for me until $900 in sales a month) I’d still be a bit behind.