I can't think of anyway you could use bitly to track the conversion rate on Donor's Choose other than perhaps making inferences based on time of donation and time of bitly click through on your link ( deep historical data about the time of each click is not yet available via the bitly api, but probably will be sometime soon).
The fact the you can even see the effectiveness of different distribution channels in driving traffic to your donor's choose page is a good first step, however. Without bitly, there's not a way to do this because the storefront is on a 3rd part domain where you can't install your own analytics software.
I've trying to think of good examples where distribution and analytics on 3rd party domains matters, and this is a great one. Others I had considered were media companies tracking effectiveness of youtube campaigns and advertisers tracking affiliate ads.
Publishers are now allowing ( and if they're smart, actively pushing) more content to be copied, embedded, or uploaded onto 3rd party domain distribution channels like youtube, facebook, and friendfeed. As this trend increases and as reblogging large chunks or entire copies of this content becomes more popular, tools for tracking the movement of the content you publish across domains becomes more important.
@JoeHobot
· 1 year ago
Weird thing is that my stat's generated over 2400 clicks and only I test donated at http://www.tinyurl.com/donorschoose . I really don't get that now at all!
I mean how is it possible that so many people visiting that site have no heart to give at least $5 , but then again I do understand...
Anyways congrats to you my friend. And I am so thankful to you helping all those kids! As robert scoble said no matter who wins or whatever, main thing is we donated and did a good deed today
fredwilson
· 1 year ago
Indeed. That's what this is all about. Although Kara has set off my competitive juices.
I think providing the analytics data from profile pages, etc, is a revenue model that more web services should pursue.
I also think that this is the bias-neutral revenue model that Wikipedia should pursue (i.e. customers pay for individual article analytics)
Anyone want to put this in front of Jimmy?
Dan Graham
· 1 year ago
A 4.5% conversion rate for a donation page is terrific. Most e-commerce sites hover between 2% and 6% from qualified search traffic.
kevinprentiss
· 1 year ago
You can call it branding or relationship, but that is what is giving you a nice conversion rate. Not many blogs, or microblogs, are delivering authentic smart people that care.
If the content is crappy the pipe doesn't matter. If the content is good, more pipes are better.
fredwilson
· 1 year ago
That's a good simple way of saying it
Joe Lazarus
· 1 year ago
Your conversion rate is good compared to a typical consumer ecommerce site. A brand name retailer will usually see conversion rates in the 3-6% range while a no-name site will typically be below 3% and the best retailers in the world see 10-15% (I used to work in marketing for JCrew.com, Walmart.com, eBay, and Yahoo! Shopping).
If you have access to an area of the giving page where you can add javascript code, you could use Google Analytics to track conversions. Google Analytics offers two ways to capture conversion events... either as "goals" or by opting into their full suite of "ecommerce tracking" features. Both take just a few minutes to set up, but you need access to the conversion page to insert the Analytics javascript, which might need to be done on Donor's Choose's end.
Darren Herman
· 1 year ago
Joe is correct in terms of putting a bit of code on the giving page.
Fred, I'm not sure why you think that analytics doesn't exist for measuring blogs/microblogs/etc. There are tons of analytics packages out there that could measure this - from the "Ferrari" Omniture to the "free" Google Analytics and everything in between. You can simply track this...
If you wanted to go crazy and create a custom dashboard for this, the guys over at VisualIQ(.com) would be able to do that and port any and all of the data and show it visually. If you didn't want something "custom", then you can get Tableau Software and look at it visually. Lots exist.
Note as well, you're looking at click based conversion. There is a whole other way to measure conversions in view-based, where the user doesn't click but within a specified window of time, they head to the site/page they saw marketed. Don't forget to count these...
Lastly, if you wanted to be extremely fancy, talk to the folks over at the Atlas Institute at MSFT, and setup Engagement Mapping as I'm sure you've got many marketing touch points.
Contact me offline for more. Back to Sunday football.
pb0810
· 2 months ago
I think that this program is great for all the school that are scarce in supplies, you see i use to attend public school, where i wanted to learn more than what the school was offering but since it lack certain things such as computer programs educational, music class where we could learn how to play at least a instrument we were cut short and only the certain kids who had the knowledge were continue to be thought playing a piano. While others if it was given the chance he/she would have more knowledge of instrument and reading notes. But it couldn't be because the government had 2 cut the school funds. The school not only did it cut the music class but as well of gym class. My points is.. if this program would have started long time ago. Right now the population would be more smarter. The public school system is a bust. The government only care in rising taxes. Like one person said in NY Times "anyone that does not like outsourcing and the destruction of the middle class is a xenophobe. We need more visas, more outsourcing, more unemployment, lower wages, and lower taxes for the wealthy." While children who are the future of this country should be first priority are put at the bottom of the list.. Did you know that other country are more advance in education then America?
All Comments
The fact the you can even see the effectiveness of different distribution channels in driving traffic to your donor's choose page is a good first step, however. Without bitly, there's not a way to do this because the storefront is on a 3rd part domain where you can't install your own analytics software.
I've trying to think of good examples where distribution and analytics on 3rd party domains matters, and this is a great one. Others I had considered were media companies tracking effectiveness of youtube campaigns and advertisers tracking affiliate ads.
Publishers are now allowing ( and if they're smart, actively pushing) more content to be copied, embedded, or uploaded onto 3rd party domain distribution channels like youtube, facebook, and friendfeed. As this trend increases and as reblogging large chunks or entire copies of this content becomes more popular, tools for tracking the movement of the content you publish across domains becomes more important.
I mean how is it possible that so many people visiting that site have no heart to give at least $5 , but then again I do understand...
Anyways congrats to you my friend. And I am so thankful to you helping all those kids! As robert scoble said no matter who wins or whatever, main thing is we donated and did a good deed today
competitive juices.
I also think that this is the bias-neutral revenue model that Wikipedia should pursue (i.e. customers pay for individual article analytics)
Anyone want to put this in front of Jimmy?
If the content is crappy the pipe doesn't matter. If the content is good, more pipes are better.
If you have access to an area of the giving page where you can add javascript code, you could use Google Analytics to track conversions. Google Analytics offers two ways to capture conversion events... either as "goals" or by opting into their full suite of "ecommerce tracking" features. Both take just a few minutes to set up, but you need access to the conversion page to insert the Analytics javascript, which might need to be done on Donor's Choose's end.
Fred, I'm not sure why you think that analytics doesn't exist for measuring blogs/microblogs/etc. There are tons of analytics packages out there that could measure this - from the "Ferrari" Omniture to the "free" Google Analytics and everything in between. You can simply track this...
If you wanted to go crazy and create a custom dashboard for this, the guys over at VisualIQ(.com) would be able to do that and port any and all of the data and show it visually. If you didn't want something "custom", then you can get Tableau Software and look at it visually. Lots exist.
Note as well, you're looking at click based conversion. There is a whole other way to measure conversions in view-based, where the user doesn't click but within a specified window of time, they head to the site/page they saw marketed. Don't forget to count these...
Lastly, if you wanted to be extremely fancy, talk to the folks over at the Atlas Institute at MSFT, and setup Engagement Mapping as I'm sure you've got many marketing touch points.
Contact me offline for more. Back to Sunday football.