Click-thru tracking has become the preferred way to measure Web site advertising. When advertising is being sold or purchased people want to know how often visitors click through to the advertiser's Web site. Because of its unique design, Statistics Server is an excellent click-thru tracker. It can record both inbound and outbound click-thrus to effectively measure the success of advertising being purchased or sold.
Statistics Server can report totals and accompanying graphs for the selected time period. Statistics Server also displays a log of all click-thru activity by: date, time, IP Address and resolved identity. Logging allows data to be post processed in order to determine if someone has given a robot the job of clicking through (the method normally used to cheat click-thru trackers).
To Create a New Click Thru Watch
- Select "Watches/Create New Watch/New Click-Thru Watch".
- The "URL to Forward to" defines the Web site Statistics Server will redirect traffic to after recording the click-thru.
- Submit the Watch to create a Watch ID. Before a click-thru can be anchored on a Web page a "Watch ID" must be generated.
Linking to the Click-thru Tracker:
A Watch ID is required before a link can be created to the click-thru tracker. It is used to ensure that the inbound or outbound click-thru is added to the correct Watch. In our example the link ID is: 3766ba01
Shown here is the URL used to generate the click-thru. This URL might define a link to MediaHouse from a Web banner vendors site.
<a href="http://<statisticsserver>/ss?click&mediahouse&3766ba01">Visit MediaHouse!</a>
Click-thru URLs are encoded as follows. There is no room for error, so it's a good idea to test the URL before linking it from the other Web site.
