Identifying conversion rate for product

[AndyMacLean]

Hi,

I need to identify the conversion rate for a product, lets call it a spanner.

I have 100s of spanner product urls and I ensured that the url protocols must include the product name e.g /red_spanner so its easy for me to work out the conversion rate in analytics for all my spanner pages as I just add 'spanner' to the landing page filter, hit the ecommerce tab and bingo.

What I cant figure out is how to work out the conversion rate for all spanner sales which includes alot of sales which didnt originate on spanner pages e.g. home page > search result > checkout. Theres 1000s of variations of this e.g. email > home > search > product page > checkout.

How can I work out the total conversion rate for spanners which needs to include: people landing on a spanner page and people who didnt arrive at a spanner page and did a search with eventually got them to the spanner pages.

Hopefully its not as complicated as I think!

Thanks in Advance!

[AndyMacLean]

Google themselves pointed me in the right direction and I figured out another solution with a tech friend.

Googles solution:

Surprisingly simple - I created advanced segments for visits to each product page e.g. for views of pages containing 'spanner in the url'. Then view traffic reports/ecommerce tab and bingo, conv rate for anyone who visited the site and looked at 1 or more spanner pages. Thankfully, and this is the key, analytics shows the visitor numbers for those that looked at 1 or more spanner pages so it avoids duplication.

Solution we came up with:

Create a session level custom variable which tracks when a visitor visits a product page i.e. 'spanner' page within a session and ends up purchasing. the custom variable is set so that is someone visits say a hammer and then a spanner page and buys a spanner, its the latter product i.e. spanner which is tracked for conv rate purposes. The exact setup of this is beyond me but it works in theory.

Hope that helps someone else with this vexing issue!

(On Mikes point about tracking page value instead, its a great one but conversion rate is an important metric for lots of reasons but not least as an indicator of sales performance. If AOV went up it would increase page value but conversion rate might be static or even falling).

[AndyMacLean]

Thanks mike. That makes sense but again there would be alot of opportunities for duplication e.g. the page value of spanner search results would be x, the page value of spanner product pages would be y and because of how people get around the site y would be included in x and vice versa. Ill check out that article.

[AndyMacLean]

David, thanks for replying again. That might work. Theres other issues here which might mean its just not possible e.g. to track conversion rate for a given product I think we can only do so if there is intent for that product e.g visit a spanner page, conduct a spanner search from home. All the visitors who e.g. type in the domain direct and bounce immediately (and the 1000s of other similar connotations) cant be included in conversion figures for a given product.

[mikecp]

I would be a little wary of combining hit-level dimensions (page) with session-level metrics (conversion rate). A better option would be to look at a hit-level metric like Page Value. More info here in this great post by Avinash:

http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/hits-sessions-metrics-dimensions-web-analytics/

[DavidKonigsberg]

I see the issue

What if you made a custom report with filter-  spanner product urls- you should be able to see uniques visitors as a dimension

[AndyMacLean]

That doesnt work because a purchaser may have viewed 20 spanner pages. The conv figures in that scenario would vary wildly based on how many spanner page views there were and not give you a true conversion rate based on a unique visit.

[DavidKonigsberg]

You can try making a advanced segment showing views of pages with spanner in it - Then Find how many transactions of spanners you got and do the math.

[AndyMacLean]

Hi Ashley,

Thanks for the reply. That gives me the landing page that originated the purchase but not the conv rate?

Andy

[ScriptiLabs]

Howdy Andy!

If you don't already, you will need to have eCommerce tracking setup on Google Analytics.
Once you do, you can scope down to Product Performance.
Apply the Landing Page as a Secondary Dimension, and this should give you the information you are looking for.

I hope this helps!

Ashley @ ScriptiLabs