Using a Page Revenue Participation metric for Conversion Optimization
Optimizing for better online conversion is, for the most part, something we do by examining our content and its layout, such as landing pages and immediate pages in our funnels – and hopefully applying some sort of testing methodology. This is a standard practice I most certainly agree upon, but I also believe that one needs to look outside this, sometimes, closed loop of pages.
I suggest, as an alternative, that you try using a Page Revenue Participation metric for your next Conversion Optimization routine, as it might reveal opportunities away from your traditional funnel. When debating this, please note that, I am purely talking about Controlled On site Content, as defined by the Online Business Measurement Quadrant.
The reason for brining this up; I only just returned from Boston, where I attended the Internet Retailer conference, and probably even more exciting the Yahoo! Merchant Summit, which was delivered in conjunction with the show (On that note, the ystoreblog folks did a respectable pre-show interview about YWA 9.5 and my book). Anywho; the merchant owners had some of the most honest analytics questions I’ve heard in a long time. You simply cannot wow these folks with a posh looking four-dimensional bubble chart – they wanted to know exactly HOW we are going to help them make more money!!) – Refreshing!
A small disclaimer; all of the below screen-shots are from Yahoo! Web Analytics, but you have the same metric available in e.g. Omniture Site Catalyst and even though Google Analytics have a different term ($ index) and slightly different calculation, it is the same optimization attitude.
So how do I use a Page Revenue Participation metric for my next Conversion Optimization routine ?
1.
Go find your most popular pages report, which in most tools, means a report that shows a sorted list of all your pages, with the one receiving the most page views on top. By most standards, this report does not provide much insight, unless you derive your revenue from page views (such as advertising) – fair enough, then this might not be a bad proxy for $money.
2.
Customize this particular report in a way, so that you get your tools revenue participation metric appended to it. In Yahoo! Web Analytics the Revenue Participation metric resides under the sales group under metrics, when using the Custom Report wizard.
3.
The below figure, shows a standard most popular pages report, which have had the revenue participation metric added to it. This is almost per default, and with out much fingering, a better choice than just looking at raw page view numbers.
4.
Fingering or not! I am a big fan of visualizing data and the below screen shot is essentially just an advert for data visualization (but also, potentially, a honest report export, that will create better value than a non colored bar chart). The below bar chart was extended to 100 bars and had its bars colored by the revenue participation metric. This alone brings instant insight, as we can spot easily spot “small green bars” – or more precisely, low page view volume combined with high revenue participation (a.k.a. important pages). We could of course expand this with more rows of data or just sift through the bars a hundred at a time.
5.
What I really like for you to do, is to change the sorting from page views to revenue participation. This changes the picture completely and it is the essence of my suggestion for you trying out a Page Revenue Participation metric for your next Conversion Optimization routine. This should in a best case scenario bring forth a set of pages, that you might not see as active drivers for conversion today.
The last X steps in your funnels, which are required for people to check out, will of course always be on top, and if you are anal (like me), I suggest you go filter them away, so you only have pure content in this report. Especially if you have to communicate this beyond yourself or your close team.
The below shows a astonishing set of facts:
- The “About us” Page Touched 23% of revenue in < 1% of visits
- Site Search participates in about 50% of all my revenue.
Knowing these two facts (which will be completely different from site to site) I hope one would set out to work on the “About us” pages AND closely look at those internal site search result pages. For these folks, their business clearly depend on it.
6.
As a closing comment; not that the upper commentary need further input, it is obvious that neither “About us” or “Search” is part of your traditional funnel analysis as below – and as such we sometimes forget to look outside our funnel.
Doing a better “About us” page, in this example, even though it is not part of the funnel, is likely to widen the funnel – and if that is not exciting I don’t know what it.
This is not the first time I talked about revenue participation per say and if you are still listening, the post about how you can Use Web Analytics to determine the width of your Internal Search Query box might be worth a read.
Cheers :-)
/ Dennis Mortensen (@dennismortensen)
June 22nd, 2009 at 14:49
Dennis, I find it dead boring how people over at Avinash’s blog splash praise all over under his posts but I can’t help and make this boring too :-)) This was a truly fantastic post – mainly because YWA is such a truly fantastic tool. What I realize more and more as I use it is that it is so darn easy to set up and use given the depth of insights one can squeeze out of it.
Many thanks and keep the posts going!
June 22nd, 2009 at 15:40
I find it useful to create a calculated metric of Revenue Participation / Visits, which is really just a programattic way of normalizing for popularity, so the high traffic pages don’t always end up on top. Also worth noting is that I believe the Google Analytics metric is based on a linear allocation rather than a pure participation method.
June 22nd, 2009 at 19:32
Hey Ben,
Even better! (that be using visits) *which is easily done by a quick export to excel.
Thanks for sharing.
Cheers
d.
June 22nd, 2009 at 19:33
Hey Jiri,
…a little love never hurt anybody :-)
(Thanks!)
cheers
d.
June 24th, 2009 at 12:23
Dennis, thanks for a great post (especially the phrase “looking outside the funnel” made my day as we’re often too obsessed only in the cart process :-)!
I’m a big fan of the revenue participation idea, and at Fruugo we’re using it not only as a page-level gauge but (using GA at the moment) we’ve e.g. built event tracking categories so that it’s easy to see how non-pageview interactions are contributing to the bottom line. Essentially, given that you have an ability to group data, you’re able to measure entire concepts the same way.
Gets _very_ exciting when you start segmenting that stuff.
Cheers,
-Leevi
June 24th, 2009 at 13:20
Hey Leevi,
I couldn’t agree more. Using this type of optimization on EVENTS brings forth the power even more – whether that be in YWA or GA :)
Thank you for great input, which I should have noted in the original post.
cheers
d.
June 25th, 2009 at 7:23
Very good and interesting post. It is important to consider the per-visit value of a page especially when combining your marketing (traffic) against revenue. It helps optimise landing page effectiveness when delivering traffic – we all know throwing more traffic at a page does not always result in higher sales so using the per-visit value of a page (ie Google’s $Index) is a great measure of your acquistion effectiveness.
As for page level contribution to the funnel, this is a great example of thinking outside of the box. For example our contact us page brought in a sizeable revenue online – partly due to the freephone number to help with quick enquiries and assisting them to go on a purchase online!
June 25th, 2009 at 7:47
Hi Depesh
Good input. Thanks! – AND to be very specific, I believe the “Contact us” page for most companies are much more valuable than they actual think it is (just like the “About us” page). The cool think is of course that we can now get a sense of this importance and there is nothing like MONEY as a metric – it clears your mind. :-)
Cheers
d. :-)
July 14th, 2009 at 9:20
Excellent post Dennis. This is a great reminder to look outside the defined conversion funnels.
I’ve used $index this way within GA but it’s good to know that there is something similar in other tools (and with a more logical name too!).
By the way, you need to put posts like these under a new category: “Tutorials for becoming a real analyst” :)
July 25th, 2009 at 12:00
Hi Dennis,
This is the first time I am reading your blog. And i found it through Google when I was searching for which keywords to chose from Analytics. And I must say I have really learnt a lot from your post.
Still I have a question, i.e while doing SEO which keywords should we focus from our ppc campaign those having most revenue or those having most conversion rate. Kindly share your views, I m little new to Analytics. Thank you
July 25th, 2009 at 13:03
Hey Imax,
It’s a good question. A very good question actually. There is unfortunately not a YES or NO response to that. It very much depends on your general strategy and how your paid and non-paid initiatives are set up and work together.
One note though. Focus on the “search phrase” itself and not so much the channel from where you got it (and don’t mix up Search Listings – PPC Keywords – with Search Phrases if you derive insight from from channel to another). For the most parts the intent is aligned from channel to channel.
Cheers and thank you for the heads up on the blog.. Much appreciated :-)
dennis
August 25th, 2009 at 9:33
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