Should I use sessions or unique visitors to work out my ecommerce conversion rate?
-
Hi all
First question here but I've been lingering in the shadows for a while.
As part of my companies digital marketing plan for the next financial year we are looking at benchmarking against certain KPIs.
At the moment I simply report our conversion rate as Google Analytics displays it. I was incorrectly under the impression that it was reported as unique visits / total orders but I've now realised it's sessions / total orders. At my company we have quite a few repeat purchasers. So, is it best that we stick to the sessions / total orders conversion rate? My understanding is multiple sessions from the same visitor would all count towards this conversion rate and because we have repeat purchasers these wouldn't be captured under the unique visits / total orders method? It's almost as if every session we would have to consider that we have an opportunity to convert. The flip side of this is that on some of our higher margin products customers may visit multiple times before making a purchase. I should probably add that I'll be benchmarking data based on averages from the 1st April - 31st of March which is a financial year in the UK.
The other KPI we will be benchmarking against is visitors. Should we change this to sessions if we will be benchmarking conversion rate using the sessions formula? This could help with continuity and could also help to reveal whether our planned content marketing efforts are engaging users.
I hope this makes sense and thanks for reading and offering advice in advance.
Joe
-
Matthew makes great points. I'd add to this that having conversions tied to membership data makes it all the more person specific. This is why you'll here numbers like 74% conversion rate for Amazon Prime members (see: https://www.internetretailer.com/2015/06/25/amazon-prime-members-convert-74-time). Aside from better tracking you can begin to see the value for Amazon in having members...
- Similar to Facebook they're collecting user data per person and building a massive user base aside from just sales.
- Better tracking.
- Higher conversion rates.
- Top of mind branding.
- Upselling
- And so on...
You get the idea. That's why when you go to Amazon.com the only pop-up or animated prompt you'll see on the home page is to "sign-in". Obviously, this could be something out of scope for your project currently, but food for thought down the road.
-
I'd argue there is value in looking at and benchmarking both numbers, though you might not get an accurate picture of both through Google Analytics. You want to know how many sessions ended up in an order, regardless of how many repeat customers there were that converted. As you said, every visit could end up in an order (you could get a little more detailed and segment to clarify just how many sessions qualify) and you want to know just how true that is. At the same time, you want to know how many unique people placed an order as well and repeat order rates.
Here is the tricky part. Google Analytics is pretty good at telling you how many sessions resulted in an order (the conversion rate you see in goal reports is goals per session). With the Time to Purchase report, you can get a fairly decent idea of sessions it took for those higher margin products. Now the other side: unique users. Users is wonky in how it is calculated (for instance one customer uses different browsers/devices or your customer deleted their cookies) so knowing how many users converted won't always give you the number you are after and, in my mind, it isn't reliable enough to benchmark.
What I do to get at the number of unique customers and orders per customer is use other tools (CRM, order system, etc.) to track that number--those systems are designed around people not sessions, so you are going to get a far more accurate picture of how many unique people placed an order. That is your benchmark, but you can map order dates and/or transaction IDs to GA so that you can understand traffic patterns for repeat customers and how they might differ.
Hope that helps.
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
-
Using logical operators (AND / OR) in Google Analytics Goal Funnels
When setting up a Funnel within Google Analytics, is it possible to use logical operators (e.g. OR, AND) in the first (required) step of the funnel? For example, suppose I want to track users who visit page1.html AND page2.html before proceeding to the destination goal. I've entered two pages separated by the OR operator, and neither the "Verify this Goal" nor "Save" produces an error message - is it safe to assume that this is working as I intend? Thanks in advance!
Reporting & Analytics | | ahirai0 -
Most of the goal conversion in Google analytics showing under referral
Hi All, I have already asked this question twice here but issue is not resolved yet. http://moz.com/community/q/all-goal-conversion-in-google-analytics-showing-under-referral http://moz.com/community/q/some-goal-conversion-in-google-analytics-showing-under-referral In Google analytics most of the goal conversion in Google analytics showing under referral from payment gateway sites (Paypal.com & epdq.co.uk). I have applied all the possible solution that suggested by Moz community experts & Google Adwords support team but it is not resolved yet and it is really weird answer to give client that I have applied all possible solution and issue is still not solved. Lastly I am sharing Cross domain tracking code here that I have used on my site. Please check once and let me know if code is correct and If not correct please help me out to correct the code or suggest any other way to fix the issue Cross domain tracking code ======================= <script type="text/javascript">(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){i['GoogleAnalyticsObject']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){
Reporting & Analytics | | Alick300
(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),
m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)
})(window,document,'script','//www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js','ga');
ga('require', 'linker');
ga('linker:autoLink', ['paypal.com', 'payments.epdq.co.uk'], false, true);
ga('create', 'UA-xxxxxx', 'auto', { 'allowLinker': true});
ga('require', 'displayfeatures');
ga('send', 'pageview');</script > I have hide the UID in above code. Thanks0 -
Implemented Enhance Ecommerce but Event tracking showing double
Hi, Today i have implemented Enhance Ecommerce with GTM everything working fine but in google analytic > Behavior > Events here all events figure i see double - triple so not getting exactly what is the issue. Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | varo0 -
Difference between Enhance Ecommerce & Event Tracking ?
Hello guys, Difference between Enhance Ecommerce & Event Tracking ? If i implement Enhance Ecommerce then no need to configure event tracking? Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | bkmitesh1 -
Offline conversions not as e-commerce transactions in universal analytics
I am working on a project to measure offline conversions with the new Universal Analytics from Google. When a lead gets the status "order" in my custom made lead management system, we sent the earlier grabbed Google client ID with the code below to Universal Analytics. The upload is working, although Analytics reports the conversion as an e-commerce transaction. I think the conversion must be uploaded as a analytics goal / event but I don't know what we can add to the code to let Analytics report it that way. Does anyone know how I can modify the code or Analytics settings to make sure that Google Analytics does not report it as eCommerce transaction? My code for uploading the Google Client ID to Analytics: <code>$ch = curl_init(); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, 'http://www.google-analytics.com/collect'); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPAUTH, CURLAUTH_ANY); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; InfoPath.2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727)"); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, "v=1&tid=UA-XXXXXXXX-42&cid=379445656".urlencode('.')."1380816256&t=transaction&tr=123.00&ti=43388&z=".time()); curl_close ($ch);</code>
Reporting & Analytics | | timvermeulen6390 -
Core audience, daily / weekly uniques
In Google analytics or site catalyst, is there anyway to target IP addresses to see how many of my daily uniques are daily, weekly, monthly and what % are just 'tourists'/'one-offs'? My site is a local news site... Or is there another way to find this info. I am trying to work out what my core audience is (that keeps coming back every day or every week). Kind regards
Reporting & Analytics | | MirandaP0 -
Analytics goal funnel regular expression not working
Hi Guys can anyone point me in the right direction. My funnels used to work fine until our app team decided to add variables in a directory structure instead of a query string. I need to be able to track page steps that now look like this Step 1 = /Reservation/Search/Var1/Var2
Reporting & Analytics | | apolloseo
Step 2 = /Reservation/Quote/Var1/Var2 I've set up this but it's not working Step 1 = /Reservation/Search.*
Step 2 = /Reservation/Quote.* What am I doing wrong?0 -
Strange Visitors To Website
OK, not quite sure how this is happening, but......... I am having referral traffic from online game sites. Actually quite a bit of it and it seems to be raising my bounce rate a bit. B Suggestions anyone? Below is my website: http://www.allianceconcretepumps.com Thank You!!
Reporting & Analytics | | APICDA0