[captainmorgram]

Why is there not the option to sort by SID in the performance reports?

I see the SID in my transaction reports, but I am not able to evaluate clicks for a specific merchant based on the SID I assigned to a certain banner.

Maybe I just can't find it, but it seems to me like this is an important feature for evaluating which links are performing, and which aren't.

[Drewbert]

I asked for the ability to sort reports via SID years ago but nothing happened.

The only way you can do it is download the report and do the sorting at your end.

[captainmorgram]

I don't see how you can sort by SID when you download the report. The report contains no reference to the SID.

In transaction reports, you can see the SID that led to that particular transaction, if there is one. This is clearly sortable.

However, I am talking about in PERFORMANCE reports, when you look at the number of clicks each banner is getting, it sorts everything by the name of the banner. So, as an example, if I have 12 text link references to company ABC's product catalog, this all shows up under a single link type in performance reports under Link Name as "Product Catalog ", and the LinkID is referenced back to the CJ Get Links screen where it was generated.

However, there is no way for me to go into performance reports, and see that link with SID "mylink" has generated X number of clicks this month. This makes it difficult to audit which links are generating interest, and which aren't. In addition, it makes it difficult to compare my own stats to those generated by CJ, as far as clickthroughs are concerned. I only have verification that a certain link was clicked if a sale is made and the SID is reported.

I understand that tying impressions to the SID might be difficult, since the tracking pixel is specific to the CJ link type, however they should make the # of clicks per SID available as some kind of report option.

There is no way for me, at least that I know of, to go into Performance Reports and see how many clicks a certain SID has gotten this month. This makes optimization of my links much more difficult.

[TLE]

A do-it-yourself method is to track your clicks going out, adding a unique identifier to each click. Then you can match the transactions reports with your outgoing click report, using the unique identifier as your sid. Most people do this on the redirect out of there site.

My click count varies from .2 to 8% of the CJ's performance report click count.

Tuan

[captainmorgram]

Can you explain this in more detail?

How do you add a unique identifier to each click?

What I want is to see how many clicks each link is getting.

When you say add a unique identifier, is this something that you have scripted with php or something like that? How do you record the unique identifier for each click?

[TLE]

Sure,

Here's the process, using the SID to carry the info to CJ.

1) For each link, create an sid with:
SID = LinkID + UniqueIdentifer

I create my own unique identifier, which is a five characters alphanumeric.

So for example if your LinkID (whatever you use to identify the link) is LinkID = 12345, then the SID would be something like:
SID = 12345ABCDEF

2) On the redirect out, write you to your database the SID (therefore the LinkID and Unique Identifier). You could also write visitor info here (request url, ip's). On an advance level you can cookie the visitor to monitor repeat visit and mark that here.

3) From your (downloaded) transactions reports, you can back track to your redirect out database/table and get the exact date/time, and figure your conversion numbers. By eyeballing the SID from the report, you should still be able to see which LinkID generated the sales.

Good Luck,
Tuan

[ReallyBigGuy]

Originally Posted by captainmorgram

I don't see how you can sort by SID when you download the report. The report contains no reference to the SID.

Download the Transaction Detail Report. it's in column O on mine in excel.

[torry4th]

Hi Tuan,

I am just curious to know if there is a way to
track your sales up to a keyword level when
doing PPC with lets say Adwords?

Thanks

Oren

***************************************************

Originally Posted by TLE

A do-it-yourself method is to track your clicks going out, adding a unique identifier to each click. Then you can match the transactions reports with your outgoing click report, using the unique identifier as your sid. Most people do this on the redirect out of there site.

My click count varies from .2 to 8% of the CJ's performance report click count.

Tuan

[TLE]

Welcome Oren.

I'm a newbie with AW, and don't do any PPC for my affiliate projects, so others might be able to chime in.

From a merchant standpoint, yup could be done, but i'm not sure how the redirects (and tracking) would work for an affiliate.

Tuan

[KevinT]

Hi captainmorgan,

Drewbert's comment was correct, there is no way to sort click traffic in performance reports by SID.

CJ should be ashamed that they have not added this basic functionality that any independent program can provide using Google Analytics on the merchant site. I have an indie program that provides reports on clicks by an SID as well as the transactions.

There is something easy you can do without waiting for CJ or setting up your own tracking databases, that will give you some sense of which links are being clicked how often.

You can set-up Google Analytics on your site (for free) and use a feature called "Site Overlay" in the content section of the analytics. This provides a visual overlay of a particular URL on your site showing frequency of clicks on links.

Not tidy as an Excel report, but gives you some idea and is especially useful if you have high conversion landing page you are optimizing.