The Page Value Metric ‑ Luna TV Ep. 18 ‑ Google Analytics

This weeks episode is about Google Analytics and the new Page Value metric. Got questions? Fire away. We’re happy to answer you and might just feature your question on LunaTV.

Transcript:

Jim:
Hi I’m Jim Gianoglio.

Phil:
I’m Phil Anderson.

Jim:
And you’re watching LunaTV where we answer questions from around the web.

Phil:
This week’s episode is about Page Value, it’s a new metric in Google Analytics. And if you want to learn more you can listen to us today, you can visit our industry blog which publishes 3 times a week. Which publishes 3 times a week.

Jim:
Or if you want to become a real expert, you can visit us at one of our trainings! We’re coming to a couple cities around the country, we usually have at least one training a month sometimes 2! New York, D.C, we are all across the country, Denver Vegas so check out our website below for the trainings and see where we’ll be at.

Phil:
So this week we’re going to be talking about a new metric in Google Analytics. You know I just logged in the other day and I saw this new metric Page Value. And I have no idea what this is. So Jim can you tell me a little about it.

Jim:
Yeah Page Value, it was right next to another one that I haven’t seen before which was entrances. Google Analytics has a habit of just, out of nowhere, out of the blue, all of a sudden you log in and you see something new. So page value is actually something that is kind of an old friend that’s come back, in previous versions several years ago in Analytics you could see something called “Dollar Index”. So this is basically the new “Dollar Index”. He’s got some new clothes, he’s got a new haircut. And he’s back and better than ever. From a high level overview of specifically what Page Value is the technical version it’s any Transaction Revenue plus Goal Values, divided by the number of Unique Pages Views for that page. Or if you’re looking at a group of pages its Transaction Revenue plus Goal Values, divided by the total of Unique Pages Views for that group of pages.

Phil:
Wow that sounds like a lot of math Jim. But essentially from what I’m hearing is I can look at my Content Report and I can see essentially the average amount of money that any given page contributed to the overall transactions. So I can say I’ve got this flow And it looks like when people search that averages out to $50, and if they look at a certain product… its good. So it kind of gives me an idea of what each page is worth, what to optimize.Is that right?

Jim:
Basically yes. So pages that you’re going to see with high Page Value are pages in your Goal Funnel. So your Checkout pages, your Cart pages because obviously anyone who purchases something has to go through those pages to purchase it. So you’re going to see those pages have a High Page Value but you want to look at other pages that maybe get a lot of Page Views but have a low Dollar Value or Page Value. Because those are pages that you can question, “Why aren’t they driving additional Dollar Value?” Maybe they aren’t meant to and that okay. Or you can look at pages that have a high Page Value and a low number of Page Views because then you maybe want to focus on that page And say “This page is driving all the value maybe we should promote it a little bit higher, make it a little more visible.”

Phil:
One thing I noticed that makes this a lot more handy is the first thing you want to do when you see Page Value is sort it. You’ll see which pages are making you the most money. Usually you’ll see a lot of outliers, like typically I’ll see customers hit “search pages”. So they’re seeing a search term and one person has done this, they bought $5000, so this now has an average Page Value of $5000. So you’re going to want to normalize that by using filters and things that say “Show me pages that have at least 5 uniques.” Or something like that. That’s something I’ve found that really helps me out. It’s a great measure.

Jim:
Absolutely and also just to keep in mind this isn’t just for Ecommerce sites because again its using Transaction Revenue which is when you have Ecommerce set up, but it’s also using Goal Value. So if you have Goals set up on your site, maybe you’re a Lead Generation company or a nonprofit and you value a lead, someone who fills out your contact form at $5. Well if you set up that goal and set the goal value at $5 then you can still use this Page Value to see which pages are driving the most value in terms of leads or whatever other metrics or leads you are valuing.

Phil:
Great well Jim I’m anxious to go back now to play with thins now that I know more about this. Hope all of you will check it out. If you want to know more come to our trainings were always going to be showing you the latest and greatest. And again check out our blog that publishes 3 times a week.

Jim:
See you next week for more LunaTV!