Prerequisites and Configuration

1. SurfStats Log Analyzer / SurfStatsLive Edition - You need to run SurfStats Log Analyzer Professional Edition, SurfStats Log Analyzer Enterprise Edition or SurfStatsLive Reporting Service eCommerce.

2. Create a site profile - in the SurfStats product you need to create a site profile of type Traffic and eCommerce OR eCommerce only.

3. Web Server and Logging - You need to run a web server and configure it to log preferrably all log fields, but at least date/time, visitor IP, referrer info, cookie info, HTTP response codes, bandwidth info, files accessed and query parameters. Please also remember to disable buffering of content from the web server's poperties.

4. Optional better referrer information - As an option you can, from the landing page on your web server, make the visitor's browser store the initial referrer information as a cookie on the user's computer. When the visitor visits your site at a later stage and perform any of the eCommerce transaction types the transaction type is tied up with the original referrer info if still available in the cookie. To do this include the following two lines of code before the end of the HTML body segment (so before </body>) of all the pages on your web site.

<script src='./savecookie.js' language='JavaScript1.2' type='text/javascript'></script>
<script type='text/javascript'>saveReferrerCookie();</script>

You also need to copy savecookie.js to your site so that the code above can access it.

5. Recognition - When processing the log files the SurfStats product flags a hit line in a log file as an eCommerce transaction whenever it finds a query parameter with the name of zztype. The name of the file called (requested) in the hit line does not need to be something specific. For instance a request for:

http://<yoursite>/sla_prod.asp?zztype=ppc&source=Google&campaign=Google1&product=Log Analyzer Standard Edition&prodcat=Log Analyzers&detail=log analyzer&cost=0.40

will make SurfStats recognize this as an eCommerce transaction of type CPC Campaign. How the log line gets generated is irrelevant to SurfStats Log Analyzer or SurfStatsLive.

  • For CPC Campaigns you only need to set up the URL (with the correct query parameters) to be called from the search engine, no additional coding is required.
  • For trials, opt-ins and orders it is done either by client-side JavaScript and/or HTML. Please see Generating eCommerce hit lines for samples.


6. Parameters - The following query parameters are available and needs to be specified, if applicable, based on the transaction type (campaigns, trials, opt-ins or orders). Please see each of the transaction pages (campaigns, trials, opt-ins and orders) for specific usage for the transaction type.

Parameter Description CPC Campaigns Trials Opt-ins Orders Max Size
zztype Identifies the transaction type ppc trial opt-in order 5
source Source of the transaction       20
campaign Campaign name       25
product Product code or description     35
prodcat Product category     30
id Unique Code or number
(for instance order number)
  15
affid Affiliate ID       10
affperc Affiliate percentage       Any percentage
detail Detail from Search Engine
(search keywords)
      255
quantity Quantity       Any number
cost Cost associated       Any Amount
(no $ sign)
revenue Revenue       Any number
(no $ sign)
action Any text to indicate an action
(for instance cart view, email opened etc.)
20
• - indicates expected parameter. Parameters may also be used where not indicated, for instance using the cost parameter with an order transaction.

7. Analyze - Generate reports for the profile with the SurfStats product and have a look at the eCommerce reports on the appropriate reporting tab.

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