Dolphin Jewelry: Integrating ClickTracks Professional with Miva Merchant

Online jeweler Dolphin Jewelry (www.dolphinjewelry.com) chose ClickTracks Professional on the promise that it would integrate with Miva shopping cart and assimilate revenue events with visitor behavior analysis. "We'd done our research, and ClickTracks seemed to be the most robust, yet still user—friendly program we found that could give us the stats we needed," said Dave Dolak, President of Dolphin Jewelry. "We were excited to see how our web site was really performing."

2+2=3
Implementation and training were fine, and the valuable data started coming in. But something wasn't right. "We could see some really good keyword/search term data, and we actually made some changes to different areas of our site's content based on that information, but the revenue information wasn't right. We could take a look at the Miva back end and compare it to the ClickTracks front end reports and could see that, somewhere along the way, something was going awry," said Dave.

"We needed revenue tracking in order to see which of our PPC campaigns were driving the most qualified visitors, and which campaigns were driving the visitors who created the highest revenue. Knowing which campaigns led to high volumes of visitors, and which campaigns had lower visitor volumes but higher sales numbers was going to be integral to our ongoing pay per click budget decisions," noted Dave.

Dave and his team made a quick phone call. "We called the technical support department at ClickTracks and, while the techs were trying their hardest and were extremely responsive, things still weren't technically adding up."

Tech Support Kicks it Up a Notch
So imagine Dave's surprise when his latest phone call to tech support was returned by John Marshall, founder of ClickTracks. "The support team told John about the trouble we'd been having on the implementation, and he called me in order to get to the bottom of things. He assured me that we'd get it figured out, and kept in contact with me until everything was made right. I was impressed by the fact that he was willing to own the problem and to help us get through it as quickly and efficiently as possible."

Because of his intimate knowledge of his own product and his perseverance, John was able to pinpoint where the Miva/Clicktracks breakdown was occurring. "When it comes to shopping cart integration, what you don't know can hurt you," admitted John. "Because of the way that data rolls in, the amount of time that can elapse between revenue events and other factors, it's often difficult for site owners to feel confident that they've gotten the implementation right—until they have undeniable proof that something's off. We now have a checklist of potential problem areas that folks run into during Miva integration—and we were glad to make it worth Dave's time to be patient with us," said John.

Note: This case study is specific to the integration of a Miva-based shopping cart. Miva-related information, including the ClickTracks Miva Module Download, can be obtained at http://www.clicktracks.com/miva.php. Integrating a different shopping cart technology? Help is available here.

Diagnosing the Issues: Three Steps
First, John and the support team checked to make sure that the ClickTracks Miva Module was correctly installed into the Miva shopping cart environment. In the case of Dolphin Jewelry, the module was installed and functioning correctly.

Then, John and the team looked at another typical culprit of Miva/ClickTracks issues: domain setup. To do this, they checked to make sure that the Dolphin Jewelry shopping cart was in the same domain as the landing pages for their campaigns. "We needed to make sure that the shopping cart was hosted as part of the main domain of the site, or if it was hosted on a separate subdomain, that the alternate domain names were correctly set up," said John. "Dave's site didn't have issues with domain setup, so we moved on to the next troubleshooting step."

And the third step was the charm. Locating the second log file, generated by the ClickTracks Miva Module, held the key to solving Dolphin Jewelry's revenue tracking issues. "In addition to your traditional log files, ClickTracks' Miva Module also generates a second log file that has to be brought into ClickTracks and analyzed simultaneously. These log files are located in a rather obscure directory, so most folks don't know to look there. Once we imported the ClickTracks Miva Module log files, all the numbers added up and Dave was ready to start tracking revenue."

Post-Diagnosis
"To say we were pleased with the way John and ClickTracks handled the situation would be an understatement. The fact that they really stepped up to the plate, took responsibility for the issues and then resolved them was pretty impressive," said Dave. "If you're using ClickTracks to help you track PPC campaigns and revenue events, the program can actually pay for itself in a short time."

Dave and the Dolphin Jewelry team are making additional site changes based on the insights ClickTracks has provided. "We're working on a site redesign, with a focus on better usability and much lower exit rates. We're also changing our secondary pages, making it much easier for people to find exactly the product that they're looking for. Every step of the way, we're checking to see how our changes are impacting our metrics, including time on site and revenue generated."