I just got done all the conversion tracking code for the web site. Conversion means when somebody takes the action you desire when you market to them. There are two seperate conversion worth noticing for me: every time somebody downloads the trial version, and every time somebody pays me money. The second hasn’t happened yet (not surprising, since I’ve been open for 30 hours in the middle of the time my target audience is least likely to be at their computer). Demo downloads have been happening, but I expect thats mostly from the Joel on Software people wanting to give advice (keep it coming guys!). So now I can track whether demo downloaders are me (doesn’t count ;) ), sent in by my Google AdWords ads (which is a percentage I’m *keenly* interested in, for obvious reasons), or whether they came in from “organic” (not-paid-for) searches or even links.
Google made this all stupidly easy to set up. Hats off guys. I really hope they continue to make boatloads of money if they can continue to drive quality leads for me for so cheap (my cost per customer is sort of hard to estimate after 24 hours and no actual sales, obviously, but the kind of words I’m targetting typically cap out at about 10-15 cents with many in the sub-nickle range, with my most expensive ones being about a quarter. Doing the math, I’m profitable with my most expensive words at a final conversion rate of slightly over 1%, and I’m profitable at my least expensive words with a conversion rate of, well, anything really.)
