Conversion Rate Question: Should I Measure Visits or Unique Visits?
-
When you measure conversion rates, is the equation:
- conversion rate = visits/conversions
or
- conversion rate = unique visits/conversions
I ask because it can actually make a pretty big difference in the conversion rate. For example, if you visit my ecommerce website 100 times before buying something (and assuming you're my only visitor), then my conversion rate is 100% _if I'm determining conversion rates by unique visits/conversions. _However, it's only 1% _if I'm determining conversion rates by visits/conversions. _Wow!
Now this is clearly an extreme example, but it should serve to illustrate the point that in more reasonable cases, the way the data is measured can have a potentially significant impact on the conversion rate.
Is there an industry standard for this?
Am I missing something really basic?
Also, here's a little bit of context for the question:
I run an ecommerce website powered by the Magento CMS and I'm trying to measure my conversion rate in Google Analytics for individual products. Google Analytics shows me my site wide conversion rate, but apparently I have to do some customization in order to measure conversion rates on the product level. That's fine, but I want to make sure I'm measuring my product conversions in a standard way.
Thanks for any and all help!
Adam
-
Conversion rate = Conversions / Visitors (you had it flipped around)
Choosing whether to track unique or not depends on the buying cycle - some items (think high cost, high research) are never converted on a unique visit so by tracking unique visitors, your conversion rate is 0%.
The best solution is to track conversion per recurring visitor (e.g. conversions / unique, conv / 1st return, conv / 2nd return, etc). This will give you a better example of how many visits per conversion on average it takes for someone to convert and you can try to improve the rate at each stage.
-
conversion rate = **unique **visits/conversions is the recommended equation but there are other factors to consider in your equation to obtain the true conversion rate.
Not every visitor can be considered a conversion opportunity. Here is a good article on Kaushik.net to help you calculate a true conversion rate for your website.
-
Personally, I think unique visits are more relevant then visits. If you go back to the example I used in my original question, if 1 person visits my site 100 times before making their purchase, it makes sense to me that my conversion rate is measured as 100%, and it doesn't make sense that the conversion rate was 1%. Now that's my opinion, however I don't want to measure my conversion rates that way if the industry measures it a completely different way.
Though after I re-read your response I'm beginning to think that you're saying something very similar to Kevin Budzynski, which is that you can measure two different things if you look at visits and unique visits. That's a good point. I'll have to think about this more - but I suppose my other question continues to stand, which is, is there an industry standard?
-
We are planning to measure both for pretty much that reason. Yet, that doesn't tell me which (if either) is an industry standard in ecommerce. Understanding the industry standard is important if I want to understand how my conversion rates stack up against other merchants in the industry.
-
I think it depends on whether you look more closely at visits or unique visits as a definition of traffic. It also depends on what you are trying to determine like how many visits it takes to drive a conversion or how many individual people convert on average.
-
Measure both. By doing so, you will be able to see trends you may not see by doing one or the other.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Schema - Measuring Impact
Hi All,I've got a question about measuring the impact of schema. We implemented FAQ schema on a few pages such that the questions and answers written on the page are now displayed directly on the SERP.Google Search Console now provides both total page clicks and rich results clicks (under Search Appearance). To get total clicks on the page, do you simply add up the total page and rich results clicks? Or do the rich results clicks represent interactions with the accordion, rather than a click through to the page? And if both clicks are represented differently, does that mean that the page is only sometimes being rendered on the SERP as a rich result?Any guidance would be appreciated!Thanks.
Reporting & Analytics | | yaelslater0 -
Google Analytics Stopped Tracking Visits - NEED HELP!
Hi Moz Community, I have about 10 sites, static HTML sites and WordPress sites, which ALL stopped tracking Google Analytics on August 2nd. They go to a flat-line! Dead! No data! Has anyone else experienced this either currently or before? I have confirmed all code is correct as it's been tracking these sites for years. One site gets 5,000+ visits a month and they are sitting at only 1,500 now and will be a fun conversation to have with the client. If all code is correct, what should I do? How do I overcome this without having to re-create another account/tracking ID? Never dealt with something like this before and there is not much on the web or in other forums. Would appreciate any help or advice or tips! - Patrick
Reporting & Analytics | | WhiteboardCreations0 -
Some goal conversion in Google analytics showing under referral
Yesterday I have created Google analytics account for a new website but few goal conversions comes from payment gateway site (paypal.com, epdq.co.uk) and showing under referral. How to fix this issue so I can know the real source of Goal conversion. *Note - utm_nooverride=1 on thank you page applied, payment gateway URL is already placed in Referral Exclusion List. So please don't suggest either of them. Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | Alick3000 -
Uptick in not tracked conversions / anyone have a list of things that google analytics will not track
There seems to have been an uptick in users on our site not being tracked in Google Analytics cause I see a lot more un-tracked revenue in the last 6 months then I used to. I know analytics is still working as it has been tracking a normal amount of visits but I assumed there might be a reason less would be actually showing up in analytics (mabye a change is what is being reported as organic). I know a lot of stuff goes into "not provided" such as logged in search and stuff like that but is there a list of all of the ones that go into not provided and all that just do not get tracked (javascript not enabled, iOS?). If it could be something else as well let me know. Thanks for the help!
Reporting & Analytics | | Gordian0 -
Google Analytics-Unique visitors?
Does organic search data show unique visitors or all visits? For example, if someone ( a single person) visits my site multiple times after searching the same keyword phrase, does that show in my analytics data as 1 hit from that keyword, or all hits? Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | RickyShockley0 -
How do I measure the most popular article on a blog?
Just want to get peoples idea on how the best way to measure the success of the best articles on a website/blog. I'm looking at a few different options that can give each author a fair chance without being overlooked. For instance if we just look at the most clicked on article then its not fair on articles published in months with slower traffic like January. So should we measure the success by a)most page visited after an article view b)most clicked on article by month(this would be unfair for slower traffic months) c)most shared via Social d)article with most new visits It would be great to get everyone's expert opinion on this.
Reporting & Analytics | | acs1110 -
Embed elements on my page help decrease my bounce rate?
I've embed elements on my page (vídeos, presentations) and i was wondering if when someone uses them it counts for the bounce rate. Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | lnjaine0 -
Another high bounce rate
Hi there, One of my top landing pages has an 81% bounce rate. http://www.snowbusiness.com/what-we-do/film,-tv-and-advertising.aspx My first thoughts are purely bad IA and usability, but i know there must be loads of other things people might identify. Thanks in advance, Ben
Reporting & Analytics | | SnowFX0