I have a business problem. My business sells B2B software. We can use Google Analytics, etc to see how people get to our site and whether they download the free trial (desktop/server software).
When it comes time to purchase, every once in a while the same person that downloaded comes to our online purchase page and we're able to attribute the sale back to the channel/ad/blog it came from.
Most of the time though, someone else (the boss, a purchasing person, etc) on a different PC comes to our online order page and pays. From Analytics point of view they came from nowhere. Or worse, they fax/email a purchase order.
I would love a way to accurately track the source of our sales without introducing painful process (requiring some sort of download ID for example) to the purchase process.
The simplest solution is to require your customers to register before downloading a free trial. I can't think of a good reason why you can't do this for B2B software.
And if you're worried about conversion rates dropping, I have seen many companies report that their switch from "no signup required" to "signup required" resulted in no difference in conversions. It's certainly worth a test.
We do request they signup. But we allow the download without it. I'd guess 60% give us an email address. Mapping the purchase to the email domain shouldn't be too hard. Then we need to track the email signup to the original source (doable in Google Analytics???)
Have you tried a mapping based on IP address (this might work depending on the size of the business)? If the business is big enough, IP addresses should/would be registered to the company rather than a general-purpose ISP.
When it comes time to purchase, every once in a while the same person that downloaded comes to our online purchase page and we're able to attribute the sale back to the channel/ad/blog it came from.
Most of the time though, someone else (the boss, a purchasing person, etc) on a different PC comes to our online order page and pays. From Analytics point of view they came from nowhere. Or worse, they fax/email a purchase order.
I would love a way to accurately track the source of our sales without introducing painful process (requiring some sort of download ID for example) to the purchase process.