The Marketing Report is geared around showing you how your visitors are finding your store. This can help you gauge the effectiveness of a marketing campaign or find a new avenue for advertising. The Marketing Report can be viewed under Analytics › Marketing.
Visit Origin by Revenue Graph
The report begins with a graph of your revenue over time, color-coded by the origin of the visit. The key to the left shows which color represents each origin, as well as the total revenue associated with that origin in the given time frame.
Metric Breakdown
| Metric | Description | Calculation |
|---|---|---|
| Direct | visits that came to the site by typing the website address directly | sum (revenue from orders where referrer = direct) |
| Search | visits that came to the site due to search engine traffic (e.g. Google) | sum (revenue from orders where referrer = Search |
| Social | visits sourced from social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Instagram, or Tumblr | sum (revenue from orders where referrer = Social) |
| Campaign (UTM) | revenue from visits that resulted as a click through from an ad placement tagged with UTM | sum (revenue from orders where referrer = Campaign (UTM)) |
| Adwords | revenue from visits that resulted as a click through from a Google Ad, tagged with Google Click ID (GCLID) | sum (revenue from orders where referrer = Google Ads) |
| Referrer | revenue from visitors that came as a result of a referral from another website | sum (revenue from orders where referrer = Referrer) |
Take Action with Data — Understanding how each visit origin contributes to total sales is important when deciding where to spend your marketing dollars. Monitor how each visit origin is trending to measure the impact of any changes in your marketing actions and how it affects your revenue. The trends from these metrics can also help you predict future behavior.
Supplemental Information on Attributions
We use request and referer URL to calculate the attributions. The following is the exact order of logic we perform in our analytic pipelines.
| Metric | URL Indicators | Example |
| Campaign (GTM) |
| https://www.bcapparel.com/veterans/?utm_source=TeeStore&utm_medium=email |
| Adwords | gclid | https://www.bcbulkgoods.com/candles/?gclid=R6Tp-BYQAvx_BkE |
| Subdomain | The request and referer URLs share the same domain. | Request URL: https://www.bcsports.com/big-baseball/
Referer URL: https://store.bcsports.com/big-baseball/ |
Sources
When none of the above attributes matches, a parser is used to determine the source of the URL and its medium.
Sources can be any of the following:
- Referrer
- Search
- Social
The parser takes the request and referer URL and responds with the determined medium. The hostname is vital for recognizing the source, search term, and other information. For more information on referers and a list of supported referers, see our reference on GitHub.
| Metric | URL Indicators | Example |
| Referrer | If the parser returns with the medium as empty or unknown, then we consider the source as Referrer. | |
| Search | The parser has a lookup and based on the hostname of the URL and categorizes it as Search. This occurs for any search engine that has its name in the hostname.
We also provide more granular details, such as the search engine (Google, Yahoo, Bing) and the search term (red flower shirt, Coppertone). | Request URL: https://www.bc-beachlife.com
Referer URL: https://r.search.yahoo.com/RU=https:%2F%2Fwww.bc-beachlife.com |
| Social | The parser looks up in its data and recognizes this as Social, based on the hostname.
We also provide the identity of the social platform, such as Facebook, or Instagram. | Request URL: https://bcsports.com/tennis-balls-glo674/
Referer URL: https://instagram.com/ |
| The parser looks up into its database and figures out the source is an Email, based on the hostname.
Details such as the email provider are included as well, like Gmail, AOL, and Yahoo. | Request URL: https://bcsports.com/golf-gloves/?kc_id=2406utm_medium=email&utm_source=kevy
Referer URL: https://mail.yahoo.com/ |
Direct
If the request and referer URL have the same domain name or if the request and referer URLs are exactly the same, then it's considered as Direct:
- Request URL: https://www.bcsports.com/109165-hockey-puck/
- Referer URL: https://www.bcsports.com/109165-hockey-puck/
Additionally if none of the above logic matches, then we will also consider the visit as Direct.
Visit Origin Report
The Visit Origin Report aggregates six metrics (revenue, visits, orders, conversion rate, average order value, and revenue per visit) by the visit origin type. You can sort each metric to identify the most productive channels.
Metric Breakdown
| Metric | Description | Calculation |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue | revenue from orders where the visit originated from a given referrer for a given time period | sum (revenue from orders where the visit originated with the given referrer) |
| Visits | visits for a given referrer over a given time period | sum (visits that came from the referrer) |
| Orders | orders where the visit originated from a given referrer for a given time period | sum (orders where the visit originated with the given referrer) |
| Conversion Rate | percentage of visits that resulted in orders for a given referrer for a given time period | sum (orders where the visit originated with the given referrer) / sum (visits that came from the referrer) |
| AOV | average order value for all storefront orders from a given referrer for a given time period | sum (revenue from orders where the visit originated with the given referrer) / sum (orders where the visit originated with the given referrer) |
| RPV | revenue per visit for a given referrer for a given time period | sum (revenue from orders where the visit originated with the given referrer) / sum (visits that came from the referrer) |
Take Action with Data — This Visit Origin Report helps you quickly understand some very important data about your products:
- Which visit origins have the highest and lowest conversion rate?
- Which visit origins result in the greatest and least RPV?
- Which visit origins drive a high AOV?
Not all visit origins will provide the same results. Taking a closer look at key metrics will allow you to better evaluate how different marketing initiatives across channels fare against each other. Understanding the different strengths and weaknesses of each visit origin will allow you to make better decisions about where to best spend your marketing resources depending on your objectives.
Looking at just revenue to measure your success in a marketing campaign can be misleading. For example, the visit origin with the lowest contribution to revenue may also be the channel with the highest conversion rate or AOV. By monitoring this table closely, you can create a more holistic marketing strategy and create a plan that will truly optimize your marketing budget.
Click a Visit Origin to drill down deeper and see what exactly drives each of them.
Looking into a more detailed view of the visit origin will allow you to see exactly what ads, keywords, social media efforts, emails and blogs are the most successful in promoting your business. For example, you can now test what ad images/content resonates the best with potential customers by comparing across different versions. Or track various email campaigns to see which email formats drive the most revenue or conversion.
You can also use this table format to get the raw data to answer the following questions:
- Which marketing campaigns have the highest conversion rate, bringing in the most qualified visitors?
- Which campaigns have the worst conversion rates and/or low RPV?
- Are there any successful sources of traffic within the campaign?
- Which campaigns brought in the most revenue? Drill down further to find out what drives those campaigns.
