Visitor Tracker (visitor-tracker.js) is a free script that you can download and install on your website that will give you insight as to where your web site visitor came from.
If you are running a business you want to pair where the visitor came from and if they made a purchase. This is important so you can a) see if money you are spending on advertising is working, and b) opens up possiblities of incentivising other websites to link to you. You can agree a reward for those referrals that result in a sale since you will know exactly which customers came from which partner website.
We all know how much fun it is pouring over your Google Analytics or other web stats report. They do show where visitors are coming from - but do they show where business is coming from? The biggest problem with these is that they are geared for large websites who do all their sales online via shopping baskets or carts, with no human interaction.
For those who are TL/DR then here is a very short video that shows the Visitor Tracker in action on this website.
Take the situation where someone comes from another website, and then sees your email address or phone number. If they email you; there is nothing in the email that tells you where this visitor to your website was referred from. Similarly if they call you up, you might ask them where they came from, but it is a hassle and gets in the way of selling or taking the booking as they have to remember where they were before, and is error prone as they might make a mistake.
If you have an equiry form - these request similar information to emails for example Name, Email Address, Phone Number and Message. Often there is a drop down box presented which you populate with various options consisting of e.g. Articles written about you, marketing events you exhibitied at, etc and the major search engines, maybe word-of-mouth or direct marketing might be other entries.
The problem with this, is that people often don't bother to think when filling in these, can't remember where they heard about you, or the list is too long any they know there is no value to them for filling out the form.
Visitor Tracker generates an understandable short code e.g. GGLCUK (for google.co.uk) or KBYSCK (for this site kbytes.co.uk) depending on the site that sent you the visitor.
This is then added automatically to any email they send you from the website, added next to any phone numbers displayed on your website, and added to the receipt when someone submit a web form to you.
You can add the short code to just web forms, or just emails, or just phone numbers - or in any combination that works for you and your website.
Visitor Tracker will show you:
In E-Mails - which website referred your customer to E-mail you. The referrering website shortcode will be in the Subject line of the E-Mails you receive.
In Phone Calls - which website referred your customer to call you. You might have seen adverts in the newspaper with e.g. Ref: TIMES next to the number to call. This will be the same - all you need do is ask the caller for the code. It doesn't require any thinking on the callers behalf.
On WebForms - which website referred your customer who submitted the form. There is no opportunity for the customer to ignore the option, the field is hidden to the visitor and only you receive it.
We like to eat our own dog food here. Visitor Tracker is installed and working on the Kbytes.co.uk site.
Go to the Contact Us page and click the karl@kbytes.co.uk e-mail link above the contact form. When the message pops up you will see the Subject line contains the Ref: code already in place.
Look in the footer of any page, or for phone numbers embedded in the body text e.g. on the home page you will notice the Ref: codes are placed immediately next to each phone number.
For the purposes of this demo I have take a screen capture of the form with the hidden field set to show. If you want to see now, as I have put it back to hidden you can view source on the contact us page and you will see the hidden tag.
Visitor Tracker consists of just one file (visitor-tracker.js) and needs to be referenced from any page where you might get inbound traffic onto your site. This is done with a simple script reference.
You need to add a unique CLASS reference to the document page elements that will contain the referrer information.
You then need to execute a javascript function on any page that contains an E-Mail, Phone Number, or Form that needs tracking.
These are few simple operations for a webmaster or webdesigner or programmer to add to a website.
There are just 3 options:
1) The length of the generated short code.
The longer it is easier to understand. E.g. At length 4 tripadvisor.com referrers will be shown a short code as TRCM, at 6 TRPRCM, at 8 TRPDSRCM and at 10 TRPDVSRCM
However the downside is - that for clients calling - they will have to recite a longer tracking code over the phone, if you are using that method of capture.
2) Decide how multiple referrers are treated. Either the first web site that referred the visitor (firstWins), or the last (lastWins). I feel that "first wins" should be the setting as this gives credit to the website that first introduced you to the customer. For example the customer might be referred to you from a blog, or news article. They might doing research and eventually decide some time later to buy from you - and come back to the computer to do it several days later when the browser has been closed.
Then they type into Google your company name to get to your web site - this will mean that Google is the last referrer - but really they did nothing to be credited with the sale. The setting is configurable and the default is firstWins. Note that the industry norm is lastWins.
3) How long the "firstWins" setting last. After a default 30 days, another site can replace the firstWins website. The setting is configurable.
Nothing. It is free. I do ask you to link www.kbytes.co.uk or follow me on Twitter and tweet about the installation. Or you can buy me a beer! Full details in the download below.
Right here V1.0
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