Often when I speak to groups, I ask for a show of hands. “How many of you have a shopping cart on your Web site?” Rarely do even ten percent of the hands shoot up. That’s because most Web sites are designed to convert offline, leading to the question of how you can track those sales back to your Web site. Google Analytics and other Web metrics systems don’t do it. Well, Google came up with at least one answer a few weeks back, and I am finally getting around to blogging about it.
Google has entered a partnership with Salesforce.com that includes sales performance metrics. For the uninitiated, Salesforce.com operates a Web-based Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. Among their many features, CRM system help you track sales—even offline sales. It’s hard to tell from the press release, but it looks like the CRM dashboard can be used to track sales back to your Web activity.
If so, this would be a boon to marketers of almost any business. If you don’t have a CRM system, but you need to track offline sales back to the Web, this might be one to watch.
