Reports & Analytics Location: Campaign → Referrer
Referrer reports tell you about links that directed customers to the Argos website. For example when a customer clicks through from a Google search or an affiliate site such as hotukdeals.com, the URL is captured so that we can track where traffic is coming from.
Metrics you can use with Referrer reports;
- Visits
- Page Views
- Conversion
- Any revenue metric (prefixed ‘Revenue:’)
- Any orders metric (prefixed ‘Orders:’)
- Any units metric (prefixed ‘Units:’)
- Average Order Value (AOV)
There are four referrer reports at different levels of granularity;
- Referrers
Reports & Analytics Location: Campaign → Referrer → Referrers
This report tells you the specific URL of web links customers are using to access the website, such as ‘https://uk.search.yahoo.com/’ or ‘http://m.facebook.com’.
You may see ‘Typed/Bookmarked’ in referrer reports – this name is quite misleading and should be thought of as any visit where there was no referrer. This value will include visits where the URL was typed or bookmarked, but will also include other scenarios where a referrer is not set. These Include but are not limited to:
- Links that open a browser
- Clicking links in apps that open a browser.
- Clicking links in any email app, Outlook or your default mobile email app.
- Clicking links in text messages or instant messaging services.
- Browsers set to not pass referrers.
- During http to https redirect (or vice versa) the referrer is not passed because of security reasons.
- Using privacy software that removes referrers.
Bear in mind that it is possible to have more than one referrer per visit. For example, a customer searches ‘sofa’ in Google, clicks through to Argos.co.uk from a Google Ad and finds a sofa they want to purchase. The customer knows of a cashback offer on sofa purchases at Argos so goes to Topcashback.com and clicks back through to Argos.co.uk before buying the sofa. In this scenario both the Google URL and TopCashback URL are referrers and would be assigned an instance and a visit. However, the purchase of the sofa would only be attributed to the TopCashback URL as this was the last referrer before the order was placed.
Use this report to rank by the most popular referring URLs, or to compare conversion metrics such as Revenue and Average Order Value for different referring URL’s.
- Referrer Types
Reports & Analytics Location: Campaign → Referrer → Referrer Types
This report groups referring URL’s into 4 top level categories;
- Search Engines
- Social Networks
- Typed/Bookmarked*
- Other Web Sites
Use this report to rank by the most popular referrer type, or to compare conversion metrics such as Revenue and Average Order Value for different referrer types.
*Remember that Typed/Bookmarked actually means ‘no referrer’ and is caused by a whole load of scenarios, some of which are detailed above.
- Referring Domains
Reports & Analytics Location: Campaign → Referrer → Referring Domains
This report combines referring URL’s to their root domains, such as ‘yahoo.com’ and ‘google.com’.
For example, the below referrer URL’s would be grouped under ‘google.co.uk’ in this report.
- https://www.google.co.uk/
- http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=argos&meta=
- http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Argos&btnG=Search
Use this report to rank by the most popular referring domain, or to compare conversion metrics such as Revenue and Average Order Value for different referring domains.
- Original Referring Domains
Reports & Analytics Location: Campaign → Referrer → Original Referring Domains
This report credits success events and conversion measures to the original referring domain that the visitor first visited the site from.
For example;
- A new visitor comes to Argos.co.uk through google.co.uk, looks at a few products then leaves.
- That same visitor comes back several days later via bing.com and makes a purchase.
The Original Referring Domains report would attribute an order to google.co.uk as it was the very first referrer captured for that visitor.
