"How does the heard about feature work, and how can it help me ?" | Veracart Shopping Cart Software

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Short Answer:

The "heard about" feature can be quite a useful tool in understanding where your shoppers are coming from, and provide a supplemental insight along-side most analytics platforms. It should not be a replacement for an analytics solution.

You will find that the "heard about" results show up not only on the order details (only for shoppers that chose a "heard about" reason on the checkout) but you will also find a report under the reports section showing your most popular choices.

Detailed Explanation:

This feature is only as good as people use it properly. Your best bet is to use both this feature, and some decent analytics platform (e.g. Google Analytics) Let's highlight some of the PRO's and CON's.

Heard About

Analytics/Site stats

Quite often, shoppers may enter invalid choices, especially if you have this feature set to required; therefore we recommend that you do not set it to required in most cases. Making it required increases the likelihood the shopper will be annoyed, and thereby abandon the order.

Much more accurate since it does not rely on the shopper to choose or enter anything

Much easier to setup

Can require a website designer to setup basic analytics, and someone (e.g. the analyst) to drill down through detailed reporting.

Easier way to track offline advertising campaigns, since you can just ask them (e.g. radio, tv, etc...)

Can track offline campaigns, but requires a website developer to setup in most cases, and sometimes entirely separate websites.

Since some websites get up to 90% of their traffic from people typing in their website address in their address bar, only the "heard about" feature can really know where these people are coming from

Analytics platforms cannot tell who these people are, or why they are visiting your site; including people that have bookmarked your site and are using their bookmark to return to your site.

Not very detailed

Probably hundreds of times more detailed if you take the time to study the data.

If you do not see a "heard about" answer on some of your orders, it is because the shopper did not select a "heard about" reason on the checkout.