Prioritize Pages to Optimize Based on Monetary Contribution

September 30th, 2009 by Lars Johansson

Have you discovered the cryptic $ Index metric in Google Analytics yet? $ Index gives you a comparison of how much different pages are contributing to your bottom line. A page viewed before the completion of an e-commerce transaction/goal gets the value of the transaction/goal attributed to it. If a page has never been visited before the completion of a transaction/goal, then the value for $ Index for that page will be 0.

A prerequisite is that you have set up goals, and/or track e-commerce transactions.

The calculation for $ Index:
$ Index = (Revenue + Value for All Goals) / Unique Page Views

It should be calculated per page.

An important definition:
A unique page view is when a single page is only counted once per visit even if it is viewed several times.

Example:
If you complete an e-commerce transaction of $250 and a goal of $150 after viewing the page fultraktor.html three times during a visit, then the page fultraktor.html will get the following $ Index value: $250+$150/1 =$400. If a second visit to that page ended in a transaction of $100 then the $ Index value will be: $250+$150+$100/2 =$250. If the page cooltraktor.html has been viewed during both of the visits then it will get the same $ Index value as fultraktor.html.

Complicated? The good news is that you don’t really need to know how to calculate $ Index to be able to reap the benefits of using it in your analysis. It’s not a measurement that will tell you precisely what a page is worth in dollars. It’s simply a measurement that you can use to compare how much different pages are contributing to your monetary goals. Do not use it to say that page A is worth precisely x dollars. That’s not the point. The point is to be able to say whether page A is contributing more than page B.

A way to prioritize which pages to optimize first is to calculate the $ Index Potential for each page. You can do that by combining $ Index and Bounce Rate.

The formula to use with data retrieved through Excellent Analytics:

$ Index Potential = ((Bounces/Entrances) * Unique Page Views) * ((Revenue + Value for All Goals) / Unique Page Views)

Simplified formula: (Bounce Rate * Unique Page Views) * $ Index

Here’s how you do this step by step.

1) Download Excellent Analytics, a free Google Analytics plug-in for Microsoft Excel 2007 for Windows Vista/XP. Install.

2) Use Excellent Analytics to retrieve the data you need to calculate $ Index Potential. The following are the settings you need in Excellent Analytics:
Excellent Analytics Query

3) Add formulas in Excel. This is the end result you’re looking for (click on the image for a larger version):

The calculations you need to add are for Bounce Rate, $ Index, and $ Index Potential.

How to calculate Bounce Rate:
Excel: Bounce Rate Calculation

How to calculate $ Index:
Excel: $ Index Calculation

How to calculate $ Index Potential:
Excel: $ Index Potential Calculation

Sort $ Index Potential in descending order, and consider optimizing the page with the highest value first. Now, do not take the value too literally. Fixing the page does not mean that you will make the money stated. The monetary value should only be used to compare a page to another and help you prioritize which pages to optimize. It should not be used to say that fixing a page would make you exactly x dollars more.

Some notes:

Excellent Analytics is currently limited to 1,000 rows per query. The next version will fetch 10,000 rows.
Note that it is more difficult to use $ Index Potential for pages that contain dynamic content.
Don’t be surprised if checkout pages come out on top.
Pages with a high bounce rate are usually easier to optimize.
Pages with a lower bounce rate and higher unique page view count may still be a better candidate for optimization.
For e-commerce, pay extra attention to under-performing product pages.

Happy analyzing and optimizing!

Please give feedback on how it’s working for you.

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