Tracking the effectiveness of magazine ads for your web site...

Maggie,

I agree that this is a good option. Tests we've done have shown that running offline ads with URL's such as domain.com/1, domain.com/2, etc. can be dangerous, as lots of people will either just enter in the root domain, or end up going to the root to see what's on the home page.

If you *must* use these types of extensions for some reason, the best way I've found to deflect this from happening is to use something like domain.com/special or domain.com/private, which suggests that they have to go to that page to get something exclusive. But even this is not an optimal approach, as people will still often want to see what's on the home page. And if they find that it's the same as the "special" page, they may not appreciate it.

Maggie, your idea of sub-domains is a pretty solid approach and will probably work fairly well for tracking traffic from offline ads, but not necessarily sales, as people once again will often click over to the home page or other pages on the site. And unless you have a very sophisticated tracking system, you may not be able to trace the sales back to the original visit to abc.domain.com, xyz.domain.com, etc.

Truly, if you're serious about tracking your marketing, I would suggest simply investing in several different domains that you use solely for individual ad campaigns. Domains are so cheap these days, and most anyone who has the budget to advertise offline can also afford to invest in a few additional domains.

It all depends on what scale and with what mindset you are operating...

Best,

Jesse

> Dien - a thought - how about using
> sub-domains for each magazine.

> cosmo.website.com
> harpers.website.com

> etc.

> and then redirect from the sub-domain to the
> main domain. Most web hosts these days give
> you the option to set things up like that.

> Cheers
> Maggie