Schedule Engine and Schedule Engine Live Services offer a number of features that give you the ability to track and measure its effectiveness for your business. Generally, there are two kinds of analytics features included with Schedule Engine Services - External and Internal.

External analytics involves Schedule Engine broadcasting tracking messages to analytics tools outside of Schedule Engine. Internal analytics involves using internal tools to better understand Schedule Engine activity.

External Analytics

Schedule Engine works closely with Google Analytics to ensure that there is complete visibility into the general activity and bookings that occur within Schedule Engine or Schedule Engine Live.

When would I use External Analytics capabilities of Schedule Engine?

Many of our clients spend considerable amounts of money to drive traffic through advertisements to their website, Facebook page, etc. To ensure that their advertising dollars produce the best results, analytics tools like Google Analytics are used to understand the traffic that is arriving at their website and the resulting activity (booked appointments, etc.) Most of our clients hire an outside marketing firm to help with this. Other larger clients will have a full-time employee dedicated to managing this process. Since many marketers and advertising professionals use Google Analytics, Schedule Engine has worked to support this popular platform.

How does the integration with Google Analytics work?

For those who already use Google Analytics, it is very easy to begin to measure and report on key Schedule Engine/Schedule Engine Live activities. If Google Analytics is already installed on a your website, there is nothing else that needs to be installed or configured. All they need to do is use Google Analytics to view the key events produced by Schedule Engine/Schedule Engine Live. Table 1 provides a list of these events and labels.

What if you don't currently use Google Analytics?

There are 2 choices - start using Google Analytics OR use our simple internal analytics described below. There are plenty of videos available to learn Google Analytics. Here is a short video on getting started. 

Table 1 - Google Analytics Events and Labels

Internal Analytics

If you do not use Google Analytics or advanced website analysis tools, Schedule Engine includes basic reporting tools to better understand the activity within Schedule Engine and Schedule Engine Live.

Schedule Engine includes:

• Appointment Tracking Fields - these fields can be used to "mark" each appointment and can be used to track the effectiveness of efforts to promote online booking and chats.

• Booking Flow Analysis - Better understand the behavior of customers who are booking online.

Appointment Tracking Fields

There are 4 distinct tracking fields available in Schedule Engine:

1. Booking Source (Schedule Engine Widget, Schedule Engine Live). Every booked appointment will automatically be marked with the app/solution that was responsible for booking the appointment. This field is not customizable. It will automatically be updated with the appropriate information.

2. Campaign ID - this field can be used to mark each booked appointment with the "campaign" that lead to the booking. The Campaign ID can be whatever the client wants to use.
   For example, you have a website that has 3 different places where they have the "Book Now" button. Each page can be marked with a different Campaign ID that will allow the client to analyze which page generates the most bookings.

3. Lead Source - similar to Campaign ID. This can be used to track a lead source.
   For example, through Schedule Engine Live, we want to collect "How did you learn about us" information - Billboard, TV Commercial, etc. When combining Lead Source and Campaign ID, a client could run 3 different TV commercials (Lead Source) and tell customers to mention 3 different "secret words" (Campaign ID) to track which TV spot was most effective.

4. Affiliate ID - this can be used to track appointments booked through an Affiliate relationship and be able to report for paying referral fees.
   For example, Dustin's Garage has a relationship with 50 pest control companies in the area. When pest control companies are in homes for service, they notice that the weatherstripping on the garage door needs to be replaced. Dustin's Garage provides each of the 50 pest control companies with a special hyperlink that they use to book appointments. When they receive appointments, each appointment booked through an affiliate will be credited to the affiliate.

How would I use these fields?

You can use the tracking fields provided by Schedule Engine in two ways:

Embedded on the webpage that contains the Book Now button. The following is an example of the code that needs to be included in the webpage to set the campaign, lead source, and affiliate id information.

ScheduleEngine.show({

  campaign: 'spring2000_landing_page',

  affiliate: 'affil1234',

  lead_source: 'directmailer',

});

Included in the URL for the webpage that contains the Book Now button. The URL can include an se_action={encoded values} parameter. The {encoded values} is a specially encoded set of values that can set each of the tracking field values. Here is an example of the code that would be included:

{ affiliate: '1234', campaign: 'Summer2020', leadSource: 'Billboard', }

How can I see the results of these tracking fields in Schedule Engine?

For all of the above tracking fields, there are reports in the Schedule Engine Dashboard where they will be able to review reports based on the tracking field information and also will be able to export the data to import into their own analytics tools. Here is a sample of some of the reports:

Appointment Booking Flow

Appointment by Tracking Field

Appointment by Trade report

FAQs

1. How can I better understand what marketing efforts are resulting in online bookings through the online booking experience?
   You can either use our internal or external analytics to understand the source of appointment bookings. If you are already using Google Analytics, then you should use the Google Analytics events that we broadcast to better understand the source of bookings using the external analytics. If you are not already using Google Analytics, then you should use our internal analytics on the dashboard to learn more about how Schedule Engine is helping your business.    

2. Can I use your analytics to track the steps that a customer goes through using the widget?
   Yes, this can be accomplished with either our external analytics using Google Analytics or we have a basic chart in Schedule Engine that displays the customer journey through the online booking experience. Checkout the Booking Flow tab within Analytics on your Schedule Engine dashboard.                                                                                                                                        

3. What integration do I need to configure with Google Analytics?
   There is no special setup required. You will need to understand how to use Google Analytics to get the most out of the information we send to Google Analytics.                                                            

4. Can you help me set up Google Analytics?
   There are a lot of resources online that can help you setup Google Analytics.                                        

5. Can I run an affiliate program with Schedule Engine?
   Yes! You can assign each of your affiliate companies with a unique identification (alphanumeric) and then the affiliates can either:

   • Use their affiliate id in the Book Now button code on their website to book appointments

   • Use a special hyperlink that contains the affiliate id to book appointments                            

6. Can I do A/B testing with Schedule Engine?
   A contractor could put different campaign ids on two different web pages in their site or on two different Book Now buttons and use the internal reports to see which one produces the better results.