Today I want to touch on the URL postback feature and the benefits it offers to our customers.

The URL postback feature is a standard feature in both AccuTrack 1:1 and AccuTrack Session products. Our full integration with existing web analyticss means that there is no additional cost associated with exporting this to your analytics. If you are looking at how to correctly setup this feature, please visit the integration guide - Phone Call Tracking with Google Analytics.

This guide will show you how to correctly set up your Mongoose Metrics account to send tracking data to Google Analytics.

However, in this post I do not want to get too technical and would rather focus on how the URL postback feature works.

How it works:

Whenever a phone call is made on one of your tracking numbers, information about that call is stored on our system. If you are using the URL postback feature, information is passed to Google Anayltics whenever our server visits a designated webpage. This visit is then represented as a phone call in your reports and carries with it details about the call. This information could be length of phone call, phone number, caller location, keyword, etc.

Example:

A visitor types into a search engine “Red Cars” and clicks on your Google Adwords PPC ad. While on your website they decide to give your company a call for more information. After the phone call is made, our system will tie back the visitor session to the original call. Then our server makes a visit to a designated webpage of your choice with the information about the phone call tagged in the URL string. When you view your Google Analytics report you will see this call under the campaign section. From there you can to drill down and see that the caller typed in “Red Cars” to find your website.

How it can help you:

URL postback saves by posting phone call tracking reports  alongside the rest of your online data. This allows you quickly compare the phone call tracking to web data without the need to access two different systems.

SEO and SEM firms have found the URL postback feature helpful because it frees them from having to extract reports from our interface. Instead, clients can easily see their call data in Google Anayltics.

The URL postback feature is a great way to save your company’s valuable time. If you have any more questions, please feel free to give us a call.

Last week on the Google Analytics Blog, Sebastian Tonkin wrote about the new a Google Analytics feature which allows Adwords advertisers to import Google Analytics goals directly into Google Adwords conversion data. This is great news for those who use the conversion optimizer feature in Google Adwords to obtain better conversion rates.  This also means that you no longer have to use two different conversion codes on the goal/conversion page. Instead of using both the Adwords conversion tracking code and the Google Analytics goal code to track other traffic, you only need to use the Google Analytics goal code.

However, I want to point out that traffic from Adwords is tracked differently than normal organic and direct traffic.  Google Adwords traffic is cookied while normal traffic is tracked as a user goes from  page to  goal page. While the Adwords conversion code is no longer needed, Adwords traffic is still tracked with cookies. Keep in mind that in order for Goals in Anayltics to work traffic can not be redirected from another site to your goal page. For example, if a user is at a site and clicks on the goal page, they can not be redirected to another site or server. The new feature is helpful, but remember the differences pertaining to Adwords traffic.