InsureMe Affiliate Blog: 7 Suggestions for PPC Companies to Make PPC Reporting Better

Reporting Suggestions This week I have been doing something I haven’t had to do in a while, pay-per-click reporting. You see, the infamous InsureMe Wonder Twins, Cassie and Brittany, are off at a conference, leaving a few of us in charge of the daily task of entering cost, click, impression, etc. numbers into our in-house reports. After two days of doing this I’ve made an observation – if your company isn’t named Google or Yahoo, your PPC reporting is likely going to be poorly designed and barely useable.

To be fair, there are a number of companies that have done a decent job with their reporting, but most companies have their quirks, and those quirks can be a little more than annoying when you have to deal with them on a daily basis. (Truthfully, I have no clue how the Wonder Twins do it…must be their Super Twin Power.)

Now to make this constructive and not just a rant, I’ve decided to give PPC companies a list of 7 ~~demands~~ suggestions that will help them build better reporting interfaces. Here goes nothing:

Remember that most of your advertisers will check their reports at least once a day, so build your system accordingly – Think of your reports as a daily opportunity to remind your advertisers why they like working with you. Don’t challenge us with complexity… make it simple. For example, getting from the login to yesterday’s reports should take no more than TWO clicks (if Google can do it, you can to…right Yahoo?).
And speaking of yesterday, know that I really, really care about yesterday – Most advertisers will be looking at reports on a daily basis, and most likely they will be looking at yesterdays numbers to see how they did. With that in mind, what do you think your report’s default time period should be? Today? I don’t think so.
If I’m not looking at yesterdays report, I want to look at a date range, don’t make me hunt for where I can enter it – Seriously, how many PPC companies HIDE their date range function? Why do they do that? I should be able to enter a date range on my reports quickly and easily.
And speaking of date ranges, PLEASE let me type in a date range – I’m looking at you Microsoft AdCenter. Your pop-up calendar is fancy (or was fancy in 1993), but some of us would rather just pound in a date.
Your graphs are pretty, but I need the numbers, don’t forget that – I don’t know if there is a serious search marketer out there who gives a darn about the graphs that AdCenter gives them. I should be able to turn off your graphs if I want…and do so permanently.
And as long as I’m picking on AdCenter, PLEASE remember that I might want to change the width of the window my report is in…design accordingly – No one wants to side-scroll…it makes us feel lame, like our screens are inadequate, which leads to all sorts of geek issues. Be a friend to the geek in all of us and make your reports adjust accordingly to the width of our window.
ABOVE ALL ELSE, REPORTS SHOULD BE FAST AND UP TO DATE – Advertisers need to know their costs on at least a daily basis, and we need to access that data quickly. There is no quicker way onto an advertiser’s poo list than to make them have to fight with your system to get their reports. Remember that, ok?