Hi there, I'm a graphic designer and work for a company that publish magazines. At the beginning of this year I took it upon myself to independently learn the basics of web design (html, css and dreamweaver software) and my boss encouraged me to build a new, basic site for the company. I had a little help along the way from one or two friends in the know but I am now 'in over my head' with potential advertisers asking performance questions I can't answer. A friend helped me set up with google analytics and I should, from this, be able to answer questions on bounce rates, new and returning visitors and average times from the information when I log in to analytics. Although this isn't an area I've looked into greatly. However I used Dreamweaver to make the site and all the adverts so far, I have designed for advertisers and popped them up on appropriate pages. How do I find out the Click Through Rate of a banner ad I created (that is basically a jpeg with a hyperlink to a site)? Baring in mind this isn't in my job description and I have had no formal training in web design, I felt i learned just enough to get a site up and was naive in thinking I could leave it there. What would be the best way to go about learning all this SEO/analytics stuff fairly quickly and what are the most important stats that potential advertisers need/want? Thanks in advance Stingey
This is where you need to go beyond HTML/CSS and install a PHP ad management script. This will let you manage all of your ad spaces without having to manually edit them all, and it will track statistics for advertisers. If you get a decent one, it will also have an area where advertisers may log in and see how their campaign is doing. There are many to choose from, free and paid. Have a good look on google and see what you can find. Good luck!
If you have simply placed the image on the page manually and linked it to the advertisers website manually, then I'm afraid not. Analytics does not track clicks on individual images and things like that. The advertiser themselves could check their websites stats to see how many visitors have been referred by your site. In future I suggest you go down the ad management script route as it takes a lot of responsibility off you and makes you look a lot more professional.
You could add some javascript to your ad links so they are tracked as events in Google Analytics. Take a look at this article: http://www.lunametrics.com/blog/2012/01/26/track-conversions-internal-external-campaigns/