Embarking on a major website redesign is a daunting initiative and as a result not all things are properly analyzed before making changes. We’ve had a few clients come to us for help with understanding why their new website doesn’t convert as well as it did on their old website. In many cases it was due to the removal or navigation adjustments to key converting pages. If you are thinking of removing pages or adjusting navigation to pages on your site, you’ll want to analyze certain key reports before doing so. Not doing a proper analysis could be detrimental to converting visitors.
One of these key reports is a Page Contribution or Page Value report showing conversion metrics for each page based on how it helped converting visitors. Another metric in combination with page contribution is the Traffic Volume of each page where you are basically looking for High Visits or Pageviews. For this article I’ll focus on the reports available in Google Analytics and Omniture SiteCatalyst.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics provides you with a Top Content report accessible from the left navigation as show here:
To the right of the report is a “$ Index” revenue value for each page which represents the revenue value of all visitor sessions for a particular page. To give you a better idea of what this means, I’ve provided an example showing how Google Analytics calculates $ Index:
- You have 10 unique pageviews for a particular page (from 10 visitor sessions): 10 total
- Out of those 10 visitor sessions involving that page, 2 of the sessions converted with Revenues of ($150 and $50): $200 total
- Google Analytics calculates the $ Index as follows:
($150+$50)/10=$20 - So the $ Index value for this particular page is $20
In the screen shot above, Page 1 and Page 3 are High Traffic Volume with High $ Index values so should be analyzed closely before making any changes to them.
NOTE: summing up all the $ Index values for all pages will NOT total the same revenue in the Ecommerce report section.
Refer to their FAQ for more details and examples describing their calculation method (http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=86205).
Omniture SiteCatalyst
SiteCatalyst provides you with a Pages (earlier version was called Page Value) report accessible from the left navigation as show here:
SiteCatalyst uses a different calculation which only includes Visitor sessions that converted. For each of those visitor sessions that converted, it will count the number of pages visited in that session’s path and divide the Revenue or other event counter metric equally across all pages . To give you a better idea of what this means, I’ve provided an example showing how SiteCatalyst calculates these values:
- Looking at one visitor session, this person visited 10 pages in their session prior and including the order confirmation page: total 10 pages
- The page we are analyze was visited 2 times before the conversion occurred: 2 pageviews
- In this visitor session, the revenue amount was $200 and number of orders was 1
Revenue Value of Page: ($200/10pages)*2samepages=$40 Revenue
Order Value of Page: (1/10pages)*2samepages: 0.20 Orders - So the Revenue is $40 and the Orders is 0.20 for this particular page
In the screen shot above, Page 5 is a High Traffic Volume with High Revenue/Order values so it should be analyzed closely before making any changes to it.
NOTE: SitCatalyst’s calculation method will allow you to sum up all the pages revenue so that the amounts total the same revenue in the Revenue report section. Orders or other event counters may not add up appropriately because SiteCatalyst rounds its numbers so something like 0.4 would round to 0 in page reports.
Refer to their FAQ or consult with your Omniture Support Representative for more details and examples describing their calculation method.
When reviewing these reports, the Contribution Values will be Very High for pages like shopping cart, checkout, order confirmation, lead forms, lead confirmation, etc…so you don’t need to pay too much attention to those as you will most likely have similar pages in your new website as well. You probably should just compare the values before and after to make sure the ratios between it and other pages haven’t drastically changed.
In both solutions (Google Analytics and Omniture SiteCatalyst), the page contribution reports combined with traffic volumes allows you to understand the importance of a particular page in converting consumers on the website. You always want to focus on High Traffic Volume pages with High Contribution Values when making your assessment of what to keep, change or remove during your major website redesign.
This information applies to all types of website including Lead Generation, Retail Based and other types of Informational websites. If you’re using Google Analytics and have a Lead Generation or Informational website, don’t forget to setup Ecommerce Tracking for them to gain access to the “$ Index” page values. Refer to my previous blog on this subject (Google Analytics Tips: Implementing Ecommerce Tracking for Lead Generation Websites).
There are other reports to consider but to conclude on this topic keep the following in mind.
(HIGH PAGE CONTRIBUTION VALUE)
+
(HIGH VOLUME TRAFFIC)
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***VERY IMPORTANT PAGE***
If you have any questions or require assistance in properly analyzing your website statistics, please contact us.