ClickMeter Blog

How to show my guests a specific page in my stats

When you create a new guest account, ClickMeter automatically creates a
private link. If someone clicks on this link he is redirected to the 
dashboard page and he will be able to see only the data coming from the
campaigns associated to that specific guest account. 

If you want to send your guest to a specific page you should add a 
parameter to that private link with the URL of the page you want to 
show. 

Here is an example:
https://www.clickmeter.com/go.aspx?val=tN%2fIgog2rgd%2fBY17tu6DEQ%3d%3d&url=link_stats_map?link_id=9957

This link will take you to the ClickMeter demo (guest) account and 
directly to the world map page.  As you can see we added this parameter
at the end of the URL: “&url=link_stats_map?link_id=9957” 

This method works with all the pages allowed to your guest account. 
Wrong or not allowed parameters will return a “not found” message. 

How to track web visits and email opens

The tracking pixel allows you to track how many times a webpage or a banner have been viewed (visits) or how many time an email was opened (opens).

Tracking pixel is a little piece of code containing a transparent image (1 pixel * 1pixel dimension) that can be inserted in all the page of your website, in the page where a banner is published, in a blog (when you post something) or in the email you send.

To generate the tracking pixel you have to log-in in your ClickMeter account and click on “New link”. Then select the “tracking pixel” option. Then you have to follow the simple instructions to embed the code in your pages or emails.

With ClickMeter you can generate as many tracking pixels as you want. Thus you can track visits on how many websites you want, track as email opens as you want, etc…

Tracking pixels can also be used track conversions. You will able to know which user, from which page of you site, or from which email or blog lead to a conversion, also if he just visited the page and did not clicked on your tracking link.

Some of our customer are using the tracking pixel in many different ways. many of them publish the code on blog post to know how many time heir post has been viewed. Some add it to the signature of their email to know if their email reach the final user or (as an example) goes in junk.We encourage any of you to suggest different ways to use the tracking pixel (ideas@clickmeter.com)

ClickMeter API: 3 new methods available

Message for developers.
We just published 3 new API methods to our API.

24. GetLinks - Gets the list of user links.
25. GetLinksByCampaign - Gets the list of user links by a specified campaign.
26. GetCampaigns - Gets the list of user campaigns.

additional details can be found here: clickmeter.com/api

Different click types: Unique, not unique, spiders…

What are the differences between the different type of clicks?
It is the question we just received in our support email from Jenetra.

In CM there are four types of clicks:

Uniques:

“Made from a real users” - these clicks represents the number of visitors who clicked on a tracking link or visited a webpage. We check that the IP from where the click came from is unique within last 30 minutes (this default time can be changed in the setting page).

Spiders:
“Not human clicks” - these are coming from robots or web-spiders (such as search engines crawlers, rss feed generators, validators, etc…).

Conversions:
“Goal !!!” - is when that click lead to the conversion. Someone clicked that link or visited that page and then purchased or subscribed.

Not uniques:

“Multiple clicks” - All other clicks. Practically are all the clicks made from the same person after the first click.

(Source: clickmeter.com)

Create and modify tracking links with Excel files

With the new Import links (beta) feature everyone is now able to create (or modify) tracking links on ClickMeter just uploading an Excel file. This is very useful if you need to move a big quantity of links to your account.
 
How it works:
- After login go to Settings > Import links
- Download the empty template
- Fill the template file with data:
    o  # (not mandatory) is just for your reference and can be filled with numbers or
text (not mandatory)
    o  Campaign_Name (mandatory)
must contain the name of the campaign you want to associate this tracking link to.
    o  Friendly_Name (mandatory)
is the name of the tracking link that will be shown in your stats
    o  Tracking_domain (mandatory)
is the domain extension that will be in your tracking link (you must choose from the available domains. By default are 9nl.com and go.clickmeter.com)
    o  Tracking_folder (mandatory)
is what appear after the “/” in your tracking domain (this must be unique). For example go.clickmeter.com/Tracking_folder
    o  Destination_URL (mandatory)
is the page where you want to send who clicked on the tracking link
-   Start import
 
After the import procedure a report file will be available to show you what happened link by link.
 
We also limited the number of links that can be created. Everyone can create at least 500 links and plans that allows to track more than 5,000 clicks per month can create much more links. For example the “Large” plan allows you to create up to 50,000 links.

(Source: clickmeter.com)

API: 4 new methods available

Due to many requests we are receiving, ClickMeter API (Application programming interface)  have been just updated with four new methods all regarding the Guest accounts management.

Following is the list of new methods:

• CreateGuest
Creates a new guest user.

• GetGuest
Retrieve an instance of a guest user by a specified id.

• AddGuestPermission
Creates permission for a specified campaign to a specified guest user.

• RemoveGuestPermission
Removes permission to a campaign for a specified user.

This will help all customers that need to integrate reports in their applications/websites and want to show results in real-time to their users.

ClickMeter API documentation can be found here: www.clickmeter.com/api

Tag your tracking links with parameters

We just released the beta version of our parameter tracking system.
From now on you can add, dynamically and real-time, one or more parameters to your tracking links.

Example: clickmeter.com/link_ID?My_Parameter

Everything that is after the “?” is recorded and shown in a special page: “Top parameters”. In this way you are able to add a sub-id to your links and better monitor the performances based on various sources.

To make a live-test:

a) change the parameter to this URL, copy and past in your browser:
http://go.clickmeter.com/link001?myparameter

b) watch the results here:
Demo results for parameters
Click on the “Campaigns” and then on “Top parameters”

This is still a beta feature…

…we are planning new development on this base like:
- URL build creation
- filter results based on parameters
- auto-create parameters with API

Any idea to improve is welcome: ideas@clickmeter.com

Very accurate Browsers and Platforms tracking

One of our non-stop effort is to provide the most accurate data you can find on the web. That is why we updated  the browsers and platform parsing system.

In this new release we created a DB about 30 times bigger really containing almost all types and version of commercial and not commercial browsers and operating systems (platforms). This list includes: mobiles, spiders, bots, email clients, etc…
Our DB is updated weekly to include all the latest versions.

We also created other two reports: “Browser families” and Platform families” that aggregate data so to have a glance of your audience.

Following is an example of browsers monitored on one of our links for 1week 

“Family” aggregation”:

Browsers drill down:

Client Center: manage multiple accounts in one place

Just went live today with this new feature for agencies, large advertiser, third party integration. The Client Center (CC) is an useful tool that let you manage multiple ClickMeter accounts in one place.

CC provides a central access point from where you will be able to:

• View relevant information for all linked accounts at a glance.
• Monitor your accounts more efficiently with the one-click access feature.
• Track performance, find accounts, manage budgets, and add accounts to the dashboard.

CC is only available for Agency and Dedicated plans.
To activate it login to your account and open Settings> My client center
To link a new account just add his/her email to the list. He/she will receive a message where  will be able to confirm your request.

(Source: clickmeter.com)

Track exact value for every conversion

We recently went live with a new feature that leverage Conversion Tracking.
(Is reserved to expert and technical users)

You will be able to track the exact value of every conversions an other variables such as the product ID or parameters you can pass dynamically to be stored in ClickMeter database and reported in your account’s stats.

As an example you are now able to apply “ClickMeter Conversion Tracking” to an e-commerce campaign and discover which click lead to a purchase, what is the product you sold, the value, etc… Aggregating these data you will have the exact ROI, will know which campaign is working for which product line and so on.

Read More

ClickMeter Newsletter… Ready, steady, go!

In some days our first newsletter will be sent to all ClickMeter users who requested it.
We will summarize the most relevant topics from our blog, improvements of the platform, ideas and tools for measure and optimize web-marketing campaigns.

                                      
         If you have not done yet, take the chance to subscribe now, it’s free!

PS.: The newsletter will also contain info, ideas, case studies, from ClickMeter’s best users and from who will want to share his experience. Send your contribute at newsletter@clickmeter.com

Track results coming from cross promotions

How many times marketers wonder if a conversion to a purchase or subscription was generated from an ad or another, from a campaign or another. Hard to say exactly.

Often the success it is due to the sum of different campaigns and marketing actions working together to inform and convince the customers. With ClickMeter’s “cross campaigns overlap monitor” (IP search) you can now find which clicks was made from the same IP or the same class of IPs, even if clicks where made on different campaigns. This is useful, for example,  to better understand a possible pattern in the conversion funnel or to discover malicious behaviors by the “bad guys”. You can also analyze the clicks or visits made from same users over time.

The user below clicked on our online ads ten times before he purchased our service. He accessed our website with his computer (Windows XP + Crome) and whit his iPad/iPhone (Safari). One days and some hours passed between his first click and the conversion:

How to mask urls in affiliate tracking links

Masking an URL is useful in many cases (affiliate links, more friendly urls, etc…). ClickMeter allows you to mask and track clicks and conversions on your urls and domains. To access this feature you need to be signed up and click on “new link” button. You will have access to three useful options:

1. Mask destination URL: The destination URL (domain) will not be visible in fact a transparent frame will show only your tracking-link in the browser address bar.
2. Page title: You will able to choose the page-title of the landing page (that increases ranking on search engines).
3. Encode destination URL: hide the destination URL also in the source code.

Read More

What is url masking and why is different from link cloacking

URL Masking…
… means that the visitors to the domain name will be forwarded to your destination website, however the URL in their browser address bar will remain the same. Also known as Stealth Redirection or URL Hiding, this will ensure that your visitors see the orignal domain name and not the destination URL.

How does URL Masking work?
In case of URL Masking the Domain Forwarding server sends the client a Frames page where the Frame Source contains the destination URL you have specified. This ensures that the URL in the address bar of the browser does not change though the client sees the destination page.

Why (sometimes) masking my url is useful?
Hide (mask) an URL or a domain name can be useful in many cases, following are a couple of examples:

Read More

(Source: clickmeter.com)