Introducing BlueBox2.0 WebClicks Tracker

Released with today's code update for BlueBox2.0 is a nifty new module called the WebClicks Tracker.

As a web development agency we often get asked to assist customers with Google, Yahoo, Facebook etc Pay-Per-Click ad-campaigns, and invariably, these are then followed on with monthly feedback on the progress and status of the various campaigns we are running for them.

All too often, the stats we garner from Google Analytics or engines like Google Adwords, are too generic and don't offer the sort of in-depth drilldown analysis that would make the answer to 'who is clicking on our ads' or 'what pages are they viewing' or 'how many of them leave immediately' etc etc.

Given, an experienced eye cast of the Google Analytics report for each client would provide them with lots of info, but this is very time consuming and requires a lot of hand-holding.

What we decided was necessary was a stats engine that:

• stored ONLY the click-throughs from your priority engines, ie: traced the clicks you were paying for
• allowed you to analyse the clicks in groups per user-experience, not as separate page-stats
• sent you a daily or weekly automated email summary of your site, to keep you in the loop

Our WebClicks Tracker does just that. You can edit a pre-defined list of 'accepted' referring domains, initially set to Google, Yahoo and Bing, and only traffic originating from these domains will be tracked. You can determine the frequency and recipients of an automated email which sends you all the info at regular intervals. And most importantly, you can get to view each user-session in a click-by-click manner, seeing which engine they came through, what keywords they were searching for and where they landed on your site. From there you get to see the pages they clicked on, and, if the cookie that is created by this process isn't deleted, you will see every page they come back to during the report period, even if they leave the site and return later.

The module is found under the Publishing menu, and configuration options are a set of bbsettings that can be configured by going to Admin->Module Settings:

• bbsetting_webclicks_tracker_maxmind_apikey
  This setting is optional, and if you have a web-service key from MaxMind.com the system will translate your visitor IP addresses into country codes.
  
  
• bbsetting_webclicks_tracker_search_domains
  This defaults to 'google.', 'yahoo.' and 'bing.' You can add more, just remember to leave the domain at the period (.) as this will allow traffic from all their country sites as well as the .com's
  
  
• bbsetting_webclicks_tracker_searchphrase_variables
  This defaults to 'p' and 'q' as the top 3 engines all store their search queries in either &p=my+query or &q=my+query. If any of your extra sites store their search phrases in alternate GET variables, put them in here.
  
  
• bbsetting_webclicks_tracker_email_recipients
  This is blank by default (ie no emails will be sent). It can contain an unlimited list of email recipients, separated by semi-colons (;). The email engine will only send one email every x days (where x is the value in the next bbsetting). To force the email script to send an email you can add the following to the URL of any page in you BB2 site... &global[force_webclicks_tracker_email]=1
  
  
• bbsetting_webclicks_tracker_email_frequency
  This defaults to 7, which means that the above email function will send an email to all recipients every 7 days for the previous 7 day period. To change this simply put s different number in.

Finally, and most importantly, to enable this module you will need to put the following BB2.0 tag into your page.template:

<!--:class:bb_webclicks_tracker:track:-->

As part of an ongoing enhancement of this module, we intend to integrate it with Google Adwords so that the origin adverts and their CPC details can be included in the reports.

That's it! Have fun!