Why I don’t track signups

With internet marketing you must track your results, otherwise much of your time is wasted. But what are results? Some say you should track signups, and others say click throughs. Here is what I say:

For splash pages, I only track clicks. I want to know which pages get the user to visit my site, and then the rest is up to the site.

If I were to track which splash page a user came from when they sign up, it wouldn’t matter too much. Most people click on a splash page to find out more about the site it is talking about.

People will click a splash page to find out more, and then not sign up. The splash page did a great job - but the user didn’t sign up. Does that mean the splash page is bad? No - it got someone to click and find out more!

So if you are basing which splash pages to use on signups, you very well could be using the wrong splash pages! It could be your website - not a splash page - that is holding back signups.

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:: (2) Comments :: Advertising :: Permalink

2 comments

  1. See my profile on MyBlogLog.com! Tracey Nadeau Says:
    October 25th, 2006 at 10:42 am

    Thanks for the advice and focal point, Tim! As someone who is still trying to figure out what exactly to do to create and market successful sites, this advice helps to eliminate some of the extra steps. Sometimes I feel like I’m tracking so many things I haven’t got a clue what the results mean or how best to apply them to be effective.
    Tracey

  2. See my profile on MyBlogLog.com! Tim Linden Says:
    October 26th, 2006 at 7:19 am

    Tracey - I know what you mean. The term “KISS” (Keep It Simple Stupid) applies! I’ve found I get better results when I just focus on one thing. StartXchange has been growing much faster since I’ve started tracking the splash page clicks, and clicks are much easier to track than signups (especially since most people don’t own the site they are advertising)