What is the best visitor analytics for affiliate marketing?

[cclapper]

OK OK. I know you all know Google Analytics. I used it a lot and think its a great tool. However, in affiliate marketing it has one big flaw (correct me if I am wrong). One of the key metrics that I want to measure is how did the customers(not visitors) got to the purchase and I want to know everything about them.

Google Analytics offers Goal tracking, which is great but I think there is no way how to setup Goal tracking with affiliate networks like CJ,Buy.At,AffiliateWindow etc.. The reason for that is that there is no thank you page on your site where you could place the Google Analytics code. That limits the whole Google Analytics tracking to just visitor tracking and you need to find out from a separate system which e.g. keywords brought you the sale etc.

Every network I know has some kind of keyword tracking like EPI in Tradedoubler or SID in CJ. So what I use at the present is that I put the keyword that drove the person from search engine to the SID/EPI tracking and on the affiliate network reports I can see which keyword drove what sales. That's better but still not enough.

I want to see more - which pages the person saw, how long was on site, how long between person on the site and sale tracked in the affiliate network. Without lots of custom programming you can'd find out.

So..........

Is there any system that would do that for me? And if there isn't then I will build one and offer to the rest of you if you want

Sorry for a long post, I couldn't explain it shorter.

[moredial]

It looks like you are asking for info from a server over which you have no control and no access.

It is also something that everyone doing affiliate marketing really needs else we are shooting in the dark.

The only solution is to take the orders on your own site and analyse your own logs. Google analytics just does not give as much information as is needed for true visitor tracking. Nor can you use g-a to generate reports that are truly meaningful and custom made to what you are tracking at any one time. Compared with proper log analysis, g-a is just a useless toy.

[cclapper]

Originally Posted by moredial It looks like you are asking for info from a server over which you have no control and no access. It is also something that everyone doing affiliate marketing really needs else we are shooting in the dark. The only solution is to take the orders on your own site and analyse your own logs. Google analytics just does not give as much information as is needed for true visitor tracking. Nor can you use g-a to generate reports that are truly meaningful and custom made to what you are tracking at any one time. Compared with proper log analysis, g-a is just a useless toy.

Sorry, I don't agree with you. Google analytics is not a toy. You can measure hell a lot of the things with that and for most of the sites (like ecommerce site etc) its also all you need to measure. One big flaw is that you can't use it for affiliate marketing effectively - that's what I was referring to.

[moredial]

Originally Posted by cclapper Sorry, I don't agree with you. Google analytics is not a toy.

Compared with log analysis software, it is a completely useless toy. About as useless as awstats.

[cclapper]

Originally Posted by moredial Compared with log analysis software, it is a completely useless toy. About as useless as awstats.

OK. There is one thing that log analysis software has advantage over GA. Its the ability to re-analyze the whole logs , e.g. you forgot to setup some goals etc. But in reality for most of the sites its enough to setup a goal as a thank you page on your order and you don't have to tweak that much..

I have experience with both GA and various log analysis packages like SmartStats,Clicktracks, AWStats and I must say its a pain in the ass to maintain software packages so they can connect to FTP, do the software updates etc..

GA just works.

But I would like to discuss a different topic. I respect your opinion and would like to hear others how they measure their affiliate campaigns.