Where does Webanalyticsbook come up with all this good news?  I don't know - but he seems to be keyed into stuff I don't normally hear about.  Well, Click tracks just won an award and it's an excuse for me to explore an issue that came up last week with a client (who happens to be using Click Tracks Pro - Web Hosted Edition). 

I will add, I told the client to get Click Tracks over Google Analytics, and got into some hot water over it (since GA has most of the same functionality and it's free).   I wanted an interface for this client that was as visual as possible - that's why I choose Click Tracks for them.

I'm Web Analytics Platform Agnostic - I'll use whatever my clients have, even though I have my preferences.  However, I noticed something last week with this client that was significant.

The client pays TravelZoo to do a mass email campaign to several million email recipients (it seems that TravelZoo is a Travel Package Aggregator).  In this case - every other week they spend several thousand dollars to email out this way (4 million of the TravelZoo list).

Here's the Conversion Funnel:

I make more money if I can get my client to sell more tickets - that's the nature of my deal with them.   But one thing I noticed right away - before we go to their site - they lost 4/5th of their promotion traffic on the TravelZoo landing page!

So I said - let's improve that - before we even get to the site - and, all else being equal - we'll sell more ticket.   And then they hit the bombshell (at least, the first one).

The said …. well, we could make the email link on TravelZoo go directly to our site instead of first going to a landing page on TravelZoo BUT our server infrastructure could not handle the deluge of traffic we'd get and our site would go down.

Ok, let me get this straight  - in this case, your paying a good chunk of money to get traffic that…..you can't handle?   Weird.

But that's real life (not the stuff that you see so much of in big corporate sites) - the messy stuff that real life business is made up.

In this case, I have master ClickTracks for them (label all their traffic) and lead them to best practices and insights that will double or triple their travel bookings and thereby double and triple what I make off the deal - but I have no control over the intrastructure or content.  

But I will say, ClickTracks looks pretty good, so far.  In a way, they see to assume you know nothing and try to do everything for you - and sometimes I find that annoying.

In some ways, Google Analytics would have been easier for me - it looks and acts more like a traditional Web Analytics package, which is, after all, what I'm used to.

So ClickTracks wins the award because it tailors itself to people who are not Web Analysts. 

Guess I made my bed and now I have to lie in it.