Paying my Referers

opel · #1 (**permalink**) 09-05-2006, 08:34 PM

Hi we are just launching a website which other companies are going to be sending us traffic through links to our website.

The lead will land on the home page or one of the other section main pages and then hopefully register their details with us for follow up.

Q. Whats the best way to track a sale back to the original referer after the lead might have visited 10 pages before actually registering with us ?

At the moment a form is filled out and then emailed to us which could be changed to record the details in a mysql database if need be.

Whats best ? Cookies, PHP script, Tracking Software (which one)

I need to be sure that if Company A passed the lead and the lead registered with us, we notify Company A and then pay them once we have processed the lead.

Help on this would be most appreciated.
thanks
Shaun.

ptellep · #2 (**permalink**) 09-06-2006, 06:04 PM

You could always set a cookie when they come to your site and populate it with the HTTP_REFER, then have the cookie expire within a day or so. You'd probably want to check and see if they already have the cookie before you re-write it.

you could also give your referers an id, so when they link to your site it would be http://www.yoursitename.com?id=101

You could set a cookie or session variable with that and have it pass as a hidden value in you form.

bj · #3 (**permalink**) 09-06-2006, 08:14 PM

The cookie is the way to go, with the special url so you can track things. I'd give a much longer expiration though, to be fair to your affiliates. People sometimes don't buy on the first visit, they buy on the second or third after looking around at other sites. The one affiliate relationship I have, and I know the guy who runs the site, sets his cookie to expire in a week. Usually you've made the sale within that time if you're going to make it at all.

edhan · #4 (**permalink**) 09-06-2006, 11:30 PM

Yes. Cookies is the way we use to pay our referrers. But visitors may be coming from different referrers before they buy. Therefore, we will pay the last referrer that gets the visitor to buy.

pagetta · #5 (**permalink**) 09-07-2006, 07:38 AM

am i right in thinking that google analytics can track this? if you implement this and set your sales as goals, GA can tell you the source conversion. would this be sufficient information for your needs?

opel · #6 (**permalink**) 09-08-2006, 09:43 AM

thank you all for your input,

the only propblem I can see with cookies is where they have been turned off - then I pressume that tracking is not possible.

with google analytics, I have read and seen that it doesn't pick up all traffic, so I am steering away from this.

I have started looking as php sessions and writing output to a mysql db to store the log and then report from this, comments on this process would be appreciated