Let's discuss metrics: Conversions

This is blog-post 2 of 2 to discuss another metric that I use every month if not more frequently.  Conversions are one of the best ways to truly measure engagement on your website.  If you are running a website that isn’t e-commerce, this is the next best thing to a transaction.  In my case in automotive we are not an e-commerce site. 

Conversions can be measured many ways.  It’s a big umbrella that we roll-up.  In GA conversions are accounted for by Goal Completions.  Under Goal Completions is various different specific goals that a shopper can produce.  For example, we measure VDP Views, or Vehicle Detail Page Views.  This is when a shopper is actually looking a detailed page for a specific vehicle.  This would be considered quality traffic and in our GA is rolled up to Goal Completions.  On the back-end of our website provider we do not include these in our Conversions.  Instead we consider Form Submissions and Click-To-Calls as a conversion.  Both of these combined out of our total website traffic gives us our rate.  Not every provider considers the same metrics in their formulas so as Kaushik mentions in the text it’s good to ask lots of questions from your vendors to understand how everything is calculated.  Kaushik also discusses this in the context of your visitors.  Do you want your rate measured with Unique Visitors as your denominator or your Total Visits? (Kaushik p.55)  In my case we want to view the Conversions with the Unique Visitors as the denominator.  In the world of auto shopping the consumer buying funnel is a long process ranging from 90-105 days.  Shoppers will visit a site many times before deciding what they want to buy.  This makes sense given the high dollar amount of this transaction.  The process is research heavy for the shopper.  Some industry reports have said a shopper will visit 26 different websites before stepping foot into a dealership, and that 90% of the shopping funnel is spent on-line.  Given this information it’s important to measure how many conversions we’re getting out of those Unique Visitors, and at what rate are they converting.  If we pair this metric with overall traffic then we can put into context how many visits we need overall to drive a conversion, and how many visits from each Unique Visitor.  This information may drive us to spend more or spend less on campaigns.  For example, if we have a sales target to reach that is higher than normal, we know we need to drive “X” traffic to reach “Y” conversions.  We also know how many Conversions we need to get appointments, and in turn sales.  The exception to all this is to consider other Goals that we have set-up under Conversions.  Some of those Unique Visitors are on the website to Schedule Service or to find Directions.  Once we deduct those traffic numbers from the total Unique Visitors we get a pretty clear picture of what has to happen to achieve certain other conversions like Form Submissions and Click-to-Calls.  Charts below show a snapshot of Q3 and Q4 in 2019.  Changes from quarter to quarter are noted with the percent changes in specific goal completions.  One goal being up or down doesn’t necessarily tell the whole store, we have to view everything in context.  For example, VDP Views were up almost across the board, but Mobile Calls and Form Submissions were down.  Does one mean success and the other not?  No, if people are looking at our inventory, but not clicking-to-call or submitting a form it doesn’t mean they didn’t visit the store or buy a car.  We can see that Maps and Directions was up huge…so maybe shoppers got what they needed off the site and then visited the store or called to make an appointment at a later time.  This is where the importance of what’s happening at retail and not just the web metrics becomes important.  If I start to see Conversions drop then I call the GM at the store and get his view on current performance.  If he’s tracking ok, then I don’t panic….if he’s tracking slow then I might dig into more metrics and sources to try and identify a problem.  Vice-versa of that sometimes all the metrics and conversions show strong positive performance but a store could be struggling.  This might mean that shoppers are engaging but they aren’t ready to buy yet, we have to remember that long funnel.  It’s interesting to pull out one or two key metrics and discuss, but for me it just makes me want to discuss ALL the metrics.  Talking about one at a time seems challenging to put things into context.

Details of Conversions:

REFERENCES

Author, A. Kaushik (2010). Web Analytics 2.0, The Art of Online Accountability & Science of Customer Centricity. Indianapolis, IN: Wiley Publishing

Modern Toyota Google Analytics. Conversion Goals Overview report. January 2020. Retrieved from https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/?authuser=1#/report/conversions-goals-overview/a5960233w11520950p190641014/_u.date00=20191001&_u.date01=20191231&_u.date10=20190701&_u.date11=20190930/