PPC Conversion Tracking Made Easy

Optimize Your Advertising Budget—Conversion Tracking and Reporting

Do you know how much money you are spending to bring new customers to your web site? Your standard pay-per-click reports will tell you how much money you are paying for each click, but how does that translate into the cost per new customer? Are you spending too much (or not enough) for each new customer you reach through your advertising campaign?

LookSmart has a built-in Conversion Tracking system that will help you measure your cost-per acquisition (CPA), the total amount you spend for each conversion. You might ask, what is a conversion? When a person clicks on your ad and visits your site, we call them a “visitor” (or sometimes a “unique visitor”). When that visitor makes a purchase on your site, fills out a contact form, or subscribes to your newsletter, we call that a "conversion" because the person has converted from being a passive visitor to an active customer of some kind.

Conversion Tracking is a tool that uses an anonymous “cookie” to track conversions on your web site. You add this cookie to your site by pasting some HTML code into the thank you page you display after taking a visitor's order or collecting a visitor's e-mail address. Adding LookSmart conversion tracking to your site gives you more visibility into how effective your advertising is at creating new customers.

The example below illustrates how an informed decision on your CPC budget could potentially drive more visitors and thus more conversions to your site. While somewhat contrived, you can see in this case that the CPC bid increase lead to an overall drop in your overall cost per new customer.

Example: (your actual results may vary)

Implementing Conversion Tracking
To add conversion tracking to your web site, all you need to do is place the LookSmart provided Conversion Tag (a piece of JavaScript code) on the page of your site where the conversion occurs. If a conversion is someone completing a purchase, put the Conversion Tag in the HTML of your order confirmation page. Or, if you are collecting an e-mail address, put the code in the HTML of your thank you page.

You will need to have some knowledge about how the HTML on your web site works. The steps you need to take are as follows:

1. Log into your LookSmart AdCenter account and check the Conversion Calculation Enabled box on the Edit Account Page. You can get to this page by clicking on 'Accounts' in the main menu followed by 'Manage Account' and 'Account Details' on the pages that appear when you click these links. Finally, click the 'Edit Account' button. Make sure the box next to Conversion Calculation Enabled is checked and click Submit to continue.
2. Set the 'Conversion Type' values on the 'Conversion Tag' page in the AdCenter. You can get to this page by clicking on 'Accounts' in the main menu. Then click on the 'Manage Account' link and finally the 'Conversion Tag' tab that appears.
   
   LookSmart currently allows you to specify five different types of conversions: Purchase, Lead, Clickthrough, Registration, and Download. For orders, choose Purchase or if you're collecting your customers' e-mail addresses, choose Lead or Registration. It doesn't matter which type you choose, so long as you remember what the conversion type means to you. Please note that selecting the different conversion types on the 'Conversion Tag' page will automatically update the JavaScript code that appears.

1. Set the 'Protocol' values on the 'Conversion Tag' page in the AdCenter.
   LookSmart supports conversion tracking for both secure and non-secure web pages. If your web page is a secure page, be sure to choose the 'https' protocol. As with 'Conversion Type' page, selecting the protocol type will automatically update the JavaScript code.

1. Copy and paste the resultant JavaScript code into the HTML of the page where the conversion event you want to measure occurs. If you're unfamiliar with how the HTML works on your web site, e-mail the code to your webmaster and ask them to make this change for you.

How can I test my implementation of conversion tracking?
The most complete way to test your conversion tracking is to search for your ad on http://www.looksmart.com, click on your ad, go through your site to the conversion page. Then check that the conversion you completed appears in conversion report in the AdCenter. Please note that conversion reports are updated once daily, so you'll need to check the report the day following your test.

If you are having trouble configuring or testing conversion tracking on your web site, please Contact Customer Service for assistance.

Would you like to track your conversions with Google Analytics?

If you're already using Google Analytics to track visitors on your web sites, you can link your LookSmart Conversion Tracking to your Google reports. You simply need to add some extra text to the end of your ads' Destination URLs for Google to recognize your clicks.

Here's a quick example of what your Destination URL might look like with the extra text needed for Google Analytics:

http://click.url.com/destination_page.html?utm-source=looksmart-{feed}&utm-medium=cost-per-click&utm_term={query: query_too_long}&utm_content={keyword_id}&utm_campaign={ad_id}

Of course, the beginning of that URL (everything up to and including the question mark) will look different for your ads. Check with your webmaster to make sure the extra text doesn't create errors for your customers before making any changes.

If you have any questions or concerns, please Contact Customer Service with any questions about these processes: 877-512-LOOK (5665).