Affiliate Tracking

This information was received by an article written by Todd Farmer & Jeff Doak
Affiliate Managers and many other web marketers have started to use a variety of tracking technologies and strategies, over the last few years, in their quest for accurately keeping track of their referred customers. Tracking customers "from click through to sale" can be accomplished with various tracking methods, such as:
• Simple Direct URL Links
• CGI/URL Tracking
• Cookie Tracking
• Self Replicated Pages
• Sub Domain Tracking
• Database Record Match Tracking
One of the good things about these methods is that each of them has strengths, and each has weaknesses. However, you’ll see that Cookie Tracking (which I mentioned in an above section) is the clear winner as the preferred single tracking method when it comes to reliable, flexible, and convenient tracking.
When you are searching through the different tracking methods, an affiliate manager has to consider these things first:
• How flexible is the method? For example: Can you track everything that you want to track and will it work with my shopping cart or ordering system?
• How easy is it for the tracking to be started and completed? Ask yourself: ‘Do I have to exert much effort re-designing and maintaining my website to work with the tracking method?’
• How much can you count on the tracking method?
• How easily can an affiliate with a lot of experience defeat the tracking method?
• Does this tracking method affect the performance of your website or web server?
Direct URL Links
A Simple, Direct URL Link is the most basic and the most limited form of referral tracking technology. The affiliate ID is only visible to the customer inthe URL when you are using this method because it passes the referring affiliate’s ID directly to the URL of a specific page that the affiliate or YOU choose (which must be equipped with an order form).
This specific page is then coded with a script, which reads the referring affiliate’s ID in the URL, and passes it into a "hidden field" in the order form on the page or to a visible "reference number", that can be printed or reported by the visitor to the website.
While this simple method is good at keeping track of immediate sales on a single-page sales site, it cannot track the affiliate ID if the customer leaves this page and returns later. In that way it is inconvenient. Since the affiliate ID is visible in the URL, customers can easily defeat the tracking by simply removing the affiliate ID from the URL.
CGI/URL Tracking
CGI/URL Tracking is a relatively effective, but sort of inefficient means of tracking that passes the affiliate ID throughout the merchant’s entire website. How it works is that the affiliate ID is visible in the URL just like in the above method and "follows" the visitor until she reaches the ordering system, where the ID is detected from the URL string. This how it follows the customer throughout the site and, in most cases, by processing all internal site links through a Perl script or JavaScript that does the following:
1. reads the current URL
2. grabs hold of the affiliate ID
3. Appends it to the URL of the next page.
This method is a bit of a fragile one because it requires a great deal of careful design of the website and maintenance of every link that is included inside of the merchant’s site. Of course, when the site exists under heavy traffic, the script can become a "bottleneck" to the merchant’s web site. In addition, if the script ever fails, the merchant’s site will fail.
The CGI/URL Tracking method is usually used in conjunction with "cookie tracking". This combination allows for the tracking of customers who have disabled their cookies. CGI/URL Tracking, however, is losing its popularity as a backup mechanism because in most circumstances, Internet users who are security-conscious enough to disable cookies are also savvy enough to navigate around the CGI/URL method as well. Customers today can easily disable the tracking by simply removing the affiliate ID from the URL and re-entering the site.
Cookie Tracking
Cookie Tracking is the most popular and annoying method to track customers "from click through to order", because it is simple to implement & use, it doesn’t require any significant web design considerations, nor does it impact the performance of the web site or web server. This method works by simply writing a small text file, which is called a "cookie", to a user’s browser when they click on an affiliate link. This cookie holds the referring affiliate’s ID, which can be identified at the merchant’s order page to credit affiliates for referred sales.
Cookies make tracking affiliate-referred-sales very convenient for the webmaster. The cookie can be read and used on any page or on any form, and can be used in conjunction with almost any ordering system. Not to mention, the cookie that records the affiliate’s ID can "live" for as long as the merchant wants it to. This is how the affiliates get credit for customers who clicked on a link weeks, or months, before finally purchasing or making a repeat purchase.
Cookie Tracking is essentially invisible to the user, because cookies are written and read "behind the scenes". Unlike the other methods, the merchant’s URL does not need to display the affiliate ID for the tracking to work. The only drawback with cookies is that a small number of web users intentionally "disable" cookies, and therefore, they cannot be tracked.
The number of Cookie Enabled browsers is growing, because a majority of web surfers’ favorite sites require cookie use; plus, the option to disable cookies isnot obvious in the two major browsers like internet explorer and Netscape. Those users who take the trouble to disable cookies are, oftentimes, the same users who will probably be wary of other tracking methods and have learned to intentionally bypass those as well.