Sales Conversion Tracking Tools for Google AdWords

Overview and Comparison of Top Testing and Tracking Tools

Split testing and tracking of Sales Conversions is what separates the men from the boys in Internet marketing. Google AdWords has a handy, built-in sales conversion tool that tells you how many people opted in, registered or bought - for each keyword. Google Analytics tells you much more.

The problems with these services are: (1) Now you're letting the vendor who sells you all those clicks also tell you what they're worth. That's like putting a german shepherd in charge of the ham sandwiches. (2) None of these services give you split testing capability.

It's much better to get your conversion data independently. And when you find out what keywords are paying and which ones aren't and adjust your bidding accordingly... that's where the profits are.

Here are some of my favorite tools for getting the job done:

1. Hypertracker: A simple, straightforward split tester and conversion tracker that's easy to use and includes some handy features.

I use Hypertracker.net to track the clicks, opt-ins and conversions of many of my clients' campaigns. For all its features, Hypertracker is amazingly easy to use. In fact, my associate Bryan Todd has put together a simple, free Hypertracker tutorial that shows you the easy way to set it up and create split-tests to track your various online campaigns.

There are a couple of things I especially like about Hypertracker:

When you're split testing two different landing pages - and you have a winner and loser, and want to delete the loser and create a new winner, all you have to do is remove the old link from the Hypertracker list and add the new link. You upload a new page for the new link and you're done.
You can add sub-campaigns in your marketing or hyperlinks without making any changes to your Hypertracker account, and the tracker will automatically recognize them.
You can track multiple events within the same website or sales process. This is something that 1ShoppingCart, for example, doesn't do.

2. 1ShoppingCart: This is not a testing and tracking tool per se, it's a full-service shopping cart that includes convenient testing and tracking features. If you only want metrics, or need a lot of sophistication, this tool isn't for you. However if you need a complete solution including database management, autoresponders, order taking and affiliate management - and yes, conversion tracking - it's hard to beat. Get a much more comprehensive report on Shopping Carts and Email Services.

3. Visitorville: If you want a totally different view of visitors entering and leaving your site in real time (as opposed to just seeing cold statistics after the fact) this is quite an eye-opener. Visitorville shows you the visitors on your site from one second to the next as they come and go.

The moment a visitor comes to your site, you see what page they landed on and which pages they visit
You can initiate a chat with them if you wish and talk to them live via chat/help box
You get a profile on them - where they are, what search engine they came from, what keywords they typed in, whether they're a new visitor or if they've been there before
You can "play back" traffic from previous days, weeks or months
Visitorville accumulates detailed analytics on keywords, sales conversions and search engine activity

My Renaissance Club Roundtable member Ari Galper has been using a very similar tool (LivePerson) to thoroughly humanize his site and identify exactly where his sales process is getting "stuck." In the course of a year and a half he doubled his traffic and increased his sales 20X. Powerful stuff, Gomez.

Other Resources:

Google Keyword Research Tools

Shopping Carts, Autoresponders and Email Delivery Services

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Perry S. Marshall & Associates is an independent consulting & publishing firm, and is not affiliated with Google.