Interpreting Your Data: Where do I start?
October 6th, 2011 | Published in Google Affiliate Network
Welcome to the first post in our new "Interpreting Your Data" series for affiliate advertisers, brought to you by Google Affiliate Network analysts. View all posts in the series here.
Affiliate program success can be evaluated in different ways, so you’ll need to clearly define performance requirements and metrics early. Questions you should seek to answer include:
- What is happening?
- Why it is happening?
- What actions can I take?
In this post, we’ll cover time periods and getting started with performance analysis.
Time Periods
The first thing you'll want to decide is what time periods are important to you. Do you want a broad, monthly view or do you need to get more granular with a weekly view? Next, decide how you want to compare your time periods. Year over year will help take seasonality into account. If you are a new affiliate advertiser, week over week and/or month over month will help show how your program is growing.
Performance analysis
After the time period comparisons are determined, start by looking at your main metrics and see if they’re up or down. It's important to look at more than just transactions. An increase in transactions is valuable but you'll also want to see if your clicks increased to really understand the reason behind your increase. Did your opportunities just convert better or did you have a larger base of clicks?
Affiliate program success can be evaluated in different ways, so you’ll need to clearly define performance requirements and metrics early. Questions you should seek to answer include:
- What is happening?
- Why it is happening?
- What actions can I take?
In this post, we’ll cover time periods and getting started with performance analysis.
Time Periods
The first thing you'll want to decide is what time periods are important to you. Do you want a broad, monthly view or do you need to get more granular with a weekly view? Next, decide how you want to compare your time periods. Year over year will help take seasonality into account. If you are a new affiliate advertiser, week over week and/or month over month will help show how your program is growing.
Performance analysis
After the time period comparisons are determined, start by looking at your main metrics and see if they’re up or down. It's important to look at more than just transactions. An increase in transactions is valuable but you'll also want to see if your clicks increased to really understand the reason behind your increase. Did your opportunities just convert better or did you have a larger base of clicks?
Now, it's time to dig deeper into your program and examine changes in publisher performance. Take a look at your publishers using the same time comparisons. This will help you identify and sort by publisher activity to find the biggest increases or decreases. If only a few of your publishers saw large gains, review any actions you took with them. Did you purchase an ad placement? Did you increase their commission rate or run an exclusive affiliate offer with them? If you saw increases across many or most of your publishers, this could be a result of a sale, or might be tied to publishers implementing creatives or offers that better appealed to your customers. Once you're able to make conclusions about the cause and impacts of program changes, you can take the appropriate steps to optimize publisher performance and drive more conversions.
It's important to understand when gains or losses are due to seasonality and when they’re due to actions taken by you and/or your publishers. For instance, if December is your top month, January sales are going to be down when comparing month over month. This is why it's helpful to use year over year comparisons and understand the seasonality of your business.
For additional resources on analyzing your program, please see this help center article.
Posted by Elliott Chapman, Account Strategist
It's important to understand when gains or losses are due to seasonality and when they’re due to actions taken by you and/or your publishers. For instance, if December is your top month, January sales are going to be down when comparing month over month. This is why it's helpful to use year over year comparisons and understand the seasonality of your business.
For additional resources on analyzing your program, please see this help center article.
Posted by Elliott Chapman, Account Strategist