We produce a low priced consumer software application, with an average selling price under $150. Our primary advertising is online, with the top sources being PPC, Organic search, and banner/text advertising. We currently use Google Analytics & Google Conversion Tracker, but it only tracks views, clicks, and a single conversion (currently set to trial). I have looked at many of the analytics programs and have become so overwhelmed. I would like to be able to track View > Click > Trial > Purchase. Doing this would let us determine where our problem is (poor ad copy = low ctr, poor landing page = poor trial %, poor order = something else). I am open to the platform as this is so important to me that I will change web servers and operating systems. I am also open to self-hosted or 3rd-party hosted. Since we are a small company, our budget is limited. I had even wondered about trying to find a "consultant" who can help us make the best decision, but I wasn't sure if that was the best option. Thanks
Perhaps you could jury rig something with what you already have. Setup query variables in your landing page for the source of traffic. It does not matter what it is, as long as you know how to match them up. Setup the conversion tracker as sale. Set the sale price for trials at $0.00 and real sales at $xxx.xxx. Then, for any day, the number of trials can be calculated. Setup a separate page for post trial sales, so that you can track them separately. What I do, since my service is free, is to set the "sale" to $1.00 on the signup confirmation page that the user only sees if they click on a link on the confirmation email. Using a custom tracking package, I track on referer, search term, and search engine. It is possible to know even when someone has forwarded a link to the site to an associate's gmail, hotmail, yahoo mail account.