I am thinking of writing tracking software.

Hey,

I am thinking about writing some advanced tracking system for visitors for webmasters. This would allow webmasters to track orders, see where visitors came from who do make a sale, see what keyword you used on your PPC for getting your traffic, and which keywords made the sales.

I know that there tools like this out there already, and they are quite pricey, about $200 i think i saw somewhere. I would be selling for much less than this.

My question is, first of all, what are these other tools out there? Could someone give me the url for them. Second, if I was going to go ahead and write one, what would you as a webmaster want it to do? What functionality should it have?

Any input is much appreciated.

Pete

 

We have tried a bunch of tracking systems. The main difference between cheap and expensive solutions is the user interface and the reporting features.

I currently use hitslink and clicktracks. Hitslink is the best online tracking that I have found for the price. It has a ton of features and is really cheap.

Click tracks is extremely advanced but requires a lot more time to get useful information out of. The interface is great and it does A-B split page testing, as well as funnel reporting and tons of other things. You can import PPC campaigns into it. It is rather pricey, but still cheap in comparison to Omniture and other more advanced tracking systems.

My personal basic requirements would be:
General Visitor Reporting (Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Daily by date range, etc.)

Page Views, Repeat Visitor Tracking (when possible), Time on Site, Time on Pages, tracking by Ip address over time,

Referrals: by country, domain, website

Navigation paths: paths, entry, exit, reloaded pages, timeouts

SE Tracking: referrals by search engine, by search terms entered, by search term and search engine, (Comparative analysis of the 2 previous), spider tracking.

Individual User Information: Browser Version, Colors, Resolution, Script Versions, Javascript Support, Cookie Support

Thats the basic stuff.

For the advanced analysis:
PPC campaign integration, adwords, overture, miva, etc.
Revenue tracking and lead generation tracking (Option to use One or Both!!!).
Exact Date / time of transaction
Conversion Rate Tracking
ROI reporting tied in with PPC campaigns.
Reporting: Average Order Amount, Volume, Time on Site, Time between transactions, website traffic volume based on the time of day, conversion reporting related back to search terms and / or referring websites.
Ability to track multiple domains in a single user account and differentiate between different domains if needed.

Also, I haven't been able to find this: A comparative analysis based on the time of day. I really want to be able to split say 6AM - 12PM and compare it to 12PM - 6PM, or something similar. I have yet to find an easy way to do this. The ability to chose between log file and javascript tracking would also be nice. Also, all this needs to be easily exportable to excel, or to a csv, etc. Realtime tracking would also be a plus.

Here are some off the top of my head. I'm sure there are a ton more that i am not thinking of.

 

Most of the cheap (under $200) tracking systems I have checked out show less than Awstats which usually comes free with hosting, Awstats also has A comparative analysis based on the time of day, week month.

So I would start with Awstats and add PPC campaign integration, adwords etc.

I haven't been able to find an affordable tracking system that shows what term was used in Adwords and follows it through to where it ends up, a purchase or stopped on the payment page etc.

Do that keep it affordable and I will be your first customer.

Clicktracks around 5k ....www.clicktracks.com
Hitslink around $50 per month ....www.hitslink.com/

 

OK I will do some research, and I think I will start work on this. Making something like awstats shouldnt be too hard...and ive already written tracking systems for my own sites.

When ive finished Ill let you know.

Pete

 

How it's going so far?

I'm starting to write a tracking script myself and looking for what to write. I know there's a lot of features that are required so I will be making a Lite, Advanced and Professional version of it, all coming one after the other (coming with each new implimentations).

Each version would be described like this:
Lite > Basic user stats
Advanced > Basic user stats + Advanced user stats
Professional > Basic user stats + Advanced user stats + ROI + ads stats

Difference from Basic to advanced is still to be determined.