How To: Track and monitor performance of your programs application sources

Posted by Andrew Purchas

A common question which we always get asked is “How do I measure where my traffic and applications are coming from?”. Even though all suppliers should be able to provide comprehensive performance reports, it's always a good idea to have your own source of information when you are evaluating how effective certain 3rd parties are. 

This post aims to walk you through one of the main ways you can easily set up tracking for each of your traffic sources and best of all, it's free! By the end of this post you will be able to provide a unique tracking link to each website where you get your applicants from (such as GradConnection) and everytime a student clicks through from a certain website you will be able to see this in real time. The free tool below will you step you through how to set this up yourself so you can make sure you're 1 step ahead of the game.

How to create tracked links

 

  • Go to Bitly and create and sign up for an account (it’s free!)

  • Take your application link (e.g. http://www.graduateprogram.com) and paste it into the link shortner.
  • Once bitly has created a unique tracked link you can copy and provide this to one application source such as GradConnection. It’s important that you only give this link to one supplier to make sure the data is remains accurate

  • Congratulations! You've just created your first tracked link!
  • If you want a new link for a different application source, just repeat steps 2, 3 as many times as you need.
  • From this point on, when an applicant clicks through from a particular traffic source bitly will display the traffic from each one below along with many more useful insights. 

One thing to keep in mind is that it is rare for these to match up exactly across all reports due things like technology constraints and other impacts outside of your control but they should all be very similar despite a small variance.

If you have any questions about setting this up yourself, we'll be happy to help so just get in touch with your account manager to get this under way!


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