Black Belt Web Marketing.pdf - Costa del Sol

Exercise 10-5 – Tracking the Effectiveness of Banner Ads
Even more important than counting how many visitors drop by your web site (Exercise 11-1), is
tracking where they come from. How else will you know which banner ads are the most effective.
Using traffic stats to evaluate effectiveness is also true for other techniques used to increase web
traffic: registration, announcements, reciprocal links, participating in discussion groups, etc.
It’s important that you know the best (and worse) sources of traffic to your site. With unlimited
opportunities for enhancing traffic available on the net, how you allocate your time and
advertising money has a major impact on how successful your site is.
The reason this subject is discussed in this exercise is because, unlike other web marketing
techniques, creating and placing banner ads (and sponsoring newsletters/mailing lists discussed in
Exercise 10-8) can be a major expense. It also represents the largest potential return if done
properly. So being able to gauge the effectiveness of banner ads is critical.
Suggestions for Obtaining Traffic Data
1. Some Web servers can track where the visitor was immediately before landing on
your page (with some limitations). See if your ISP or other web host can provide
you with this information.
2. Ask the host site to provide you with data identifying the number of impressions and
click-throughs on pages with your banner ad.
3. See if the hosting site will create a "jump" or "bridge" page on its server that is
accessed each time a visitor clicks on your banner (see below).
4. Look into obtaining commercial software that will provide comprehensive data that
will help you judge banner ad effectiveness:
If you are first starting out with low traffic, consider web traffic
software such as:
Market Wave. Hit List is a free, simple program that
is suitable for low traffic sites.
More robust programs include:
http://www.webtrends.com (An excellent program)
http://www.interse.com
Lesson 10 Pg. 23