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Why are my traffic stats different than the click stats?

Although the reports of the ShopMania system and those of other analytics systems present similar data, you must be aware that the data is generated from different sources and that the 2 systems actually report different information. Understanding how these reports are populated can often account for any discrepancies that you may be seeing.

Here are some reasons why the visits in your analytics system may be different than the clicks reported by ShopMania:

1. The traffic monitoring settings in your ShopMania account are not compatible with the analytics system that you use to monitor your traffic globally (an analytics system based on referrers requires special redirects that must include this information, while an analytics system that tracks the presence of certain parameters in links requires that these parameters are included in the product page URLs).

2. Clicks vs. Visits/Sessions: ShopMania displays the clicks your site has received, while Analytics software usually tracks visits/sessions to the site. There is an important distinction between visits/sessions and clicks, which often explains the discrepancies between these two metrics. For merchant protection reasons, we only count a maximum number of 1 click per product and 2 clicks per category, for the same merchant.

3. The tracking code on the Destination URL: if the Destination URL of your site does not have the correct tracking code installed, this visit/session will not be tracked by the Analytics system.

4. Tracking code does not get executed (or is executed with a certain delay): if the visitor stops the tracking code from loading or navigates to another part of your website before the tracking code loads, the visit will not be recorded in your analytics system. Certain browser or antivirus settings, the presence of certain viruses or other settings that use resources from different other locations can cause delays in loading the resources that are necessary for the complete execution of the page code, including the tracking code.

5. Visitor browser preferences: in most analytics systems visitors must have JavaScript, images and cookies enabled in their browsers in order for the system to report their visit. However, ShopMania will still be able to register these visitors because it only tracks clicks to your ad and does only rely on minimal JavaScript support.

6. The occurrence of various JavaScript errors or the presence of certain website features, that hinder the execution of the tracking code. Such features can include overlayers for promoting different offers, overlayers for newsletter signup or for warning visitors with regards to the presence of adult content.

7. The presence of incorrect, outdated or indirect links in the product datafeed file - if the visitor is sent to a different location on your shop, without preserving the tracking parameters in the URL, the visits referred by ShopMania will not be recorded correctly.

8. Your analytics system monitors traffic based on referrer information (HTTP REFERRER). Due to the method used for redirecting the visitor from ShopMania to your store, the referrer info may not be passed on correctly in all cases; in order to obtain information that is as accurate as possible, it is recommended that you use an analytics system based on URL tagging.

We are using an advanced protection system against fraudulent clicks including, but not resuming to, protection against spiders, bots, scripts and fraudulent users. In order to prevent click fraud (a large number of clicks on the products of certain stores without the intention of visiting those websites) we are blocking suspicious IP addresses and limiting the number of clicks that are counted from a single IP address:
- a click on a product from a single IP address is registered only once per visitor during the standard reporting timeframe (e.g., one day)
- within the reporting timeframe (e.g., one day), the system records a maximum number of 2 clicks per visitor from the same IP address on the products of a store from a certain product category;
- within the standard reporting timeframe (e.g., one day), the system records a maximum number of clicks for certain time intervals (e.g., maximum 1 click / 10 seconds, maximum 30 clicks / 5 minutes etc.)

Please note that if a click is not registered (it does not comply with the guidelines listed above), the visitor is still able to access the website he wishes to visit. If your shop is using a separate tracking system that reports all the visits referred by ShopMania, the tracking system may report a higher number of visits compared to the one reported by ShopMania.

If you wish to verify the accuracy of the data regarding the traffic sent by ShopMania (if the data reported by your analytics system greatly differs from what the price comparison system reports), the ShopMania Team will be happy to assist you with regards to the settings that must be made in order for the traffic reports to become accurate. If your store eCommerce solution allows you to add a custom script for registering all the visits that originate from the same source, we can provide you with such a script and with all the necessary assistance for setting it up correctly.

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