I am planning to use PPC to drive traffic to my site, but how can I track the performance on keywords when the affiliate network url are very different from each other. Also, is this possible to do this on API networks such as amazon, ebay and shopping.com?
Thanks,
John
Thanks David,
I have done the settings you have mentioned. Now I will do some testing to see if the keyword tracking works. I'll let you know how it works. Meanwhile, I'll look forward to hear from you again regarding the API modules.
John
Hello John,
It's not something that can be managed within Price Tapestry itself since you're really interested in whether your keywords convert; however what you can set-up is a method whereby Price Tapestry relays a keyword parameter from your landing pages into your buy URLs as an optional tracking id.
Almost all affiliate networks support tracking IDs - it's how cashback sites are able to correlate sales with users. To find them, the easiest thing to do is search on "[affiliate network] tracking id". For example, Affiliate Window supports a parameter called "clickref", so what's required is getting a keyword parameter from your landing page URL and set a cookie, which can then be set in the Buy URL when a user exits your site via your affiliate links.
Firstly, make sure that you're using Price Tapestry's built in tracking by setting $config_useTracking to TRUE in /pt/config.php and the equivalent plugin setting under the Advanced section of wp-admin > Settings > PriceTapestry.org.
The next step would be to set-up your Buy URLs with a placeholder that can be swapped out by jump.php whenever it sees a keyword cookie set. You can do this using filters, for example. if you have an Affiliate Window merchant, add a Text After filter to the Buy URL field containing:
&clickref=%KEYWORD%(don't forget to re-import feeds after adding or changes filters)
Next, edit /pt/jump.php and look for the following code on line 14:
header("Location: ".$product["buy_url"]);...and REPLACE this with:
$keyword = (isset($_COOKIE["keyword"])?$_COOKIE["keyword"]:"");$product["buy_url"] = str_replace("%KEYWORD%",$keyword,$product["buy_url"]);
header("Location: ".$product["buy_url"]);
The final step is to get the keyword cookie set by your landing pages, and since the plugin file pto.php is included before any output is generated, this could be done by adding the following code to the end of the script, immediately before the closing php tag:
if ($_GET["keyword"]){
$expire = mktime(0,0,0,1,1,2010);
setcookie("keyword",$_GET["keyword"],$expire,"/");
}
Tracking via the API modules would require that a tracking ID can be appended, I wanted to post the above first (most of it i've taken from threads on PriceTapestry.com) but I'll checkout the API modules and let you know how these can be set-up to work in the same way. You might want to have a look at this thread on PriceTapestry.com which talks about this for more info / discussion...
Hope this helps!
Cheers,
David.
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PriceTapestry.com