subject: Do you have an analytics program to track your online classifieds? [print this page] Do you have an analytics program to track your online classifieds?
Most analytics programs will tell you where your hits are coming from, how many of them are new, and how much time those visitors spend on your site. They tell you if a conversion happened, provided that you set up the code on the proper page, and what your bounce rate is, so you know when to modify your website to make it more attractive and interesting. What they do not do is tell you exactly which ad you're getting classified hits from. The typical analytics program will give you a line item telling you which site a visit comes from, but not specifically which ad.
If you advertise on classified sites like Craigslist or Backpage, you know how frustrating it can be to figure out which ads are the ones that are actually generating for you. Like most small business owners, you have probably set up a spreadsheet to track hits and you might even be asking your customers how they found out about you, but are those tactics giving you accurate numbers on the situation? Without actual tracking code in the ads themselves, your calculations are subject to human error. If you're running a large campaign and trying to keep track with manual entries, you're not getting the data you need to make good decisions on your next set of ads.
Another problem with standard analytics programs is that you can't view results in real time. Waiting until the next day to see if you are getting any traffic on your ads may seem okay, but what if you find out that next day that you got zero hits because of an error in the URL posting or a flag by the classified site? You just lost an entire day's worth of classified advertising that could have brought you new customers. How much does that translate into in dollars and cents? If you do the math, you'll see clearly that real time tracking is a must if you're running classified campaigns.
The more factors that an analytics program is designed to track, the more information you will have to make informed decisions with. A basic analytics program will give you a number for hits per page, but how much of that traffic was from one visitor browsing through your site? If internal traffic isn't measured and filtered out, your stats will be skewed. Classified ad tracker analytics are more detailed. They give you the comprehensive information you need to decide what works and what doesn't. They can also tell you a lot about your customers, such as where they come from and when they're visiting. Those two variables are pretty helpful when you're running classifieds.
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