Optimization of Monetization

I was looking over my google analytics account for one of my sites and the “Average Page View” rate jumped out at me as being insufficient. for the sake of needed a good example i’ll just tell you it was 2.35%. That means basically every visitor to my site is reading 2+ pages and then going somewhere else. It would be nice if they were all landing in the shopping cart through my affiliate link but my checks are telling me differently.

Analyze the data
I got into thinking about what I could do to 1) increase the amount of page views per visitor, 2) how to monetize every page view and 3) how to measure my successes and failures. My site’s traffic is all organic so looking at my analytics data is essential to really drive down into what they were looking for before landing on my site. I was surprised to find out over 90% came into the site from typing in a specific product name into a search engine. This excited me at first because I knew they were landing on the right (relevant) pages, but then quickly realized, I wasn’t retired yet. They weren’t buying.

Increasing the amount of page views per visitor for me is a technical challenge. Which I am undertaking. This is site is full of product reviews, hundreds of them. I was smart enough to include “buy now” buttons above and below the reviews but they went directly to the merchant. So a change is coming around that will link all buy now buttons in reviews to my store. I am hoping the change in redirection will help on the optimization side as well as the conversion rate (even though I am adding an extra click).

Make it easy to business with you, and they will do business with you.

Monetizing every page view is certainly unrealistic but optimizing your chances for a conversion is essential on every page. It’s not hard, make sure you have product information front and center, quality images, call to action and interactive components like reviews, newsletters, community, research, search box and anything else you can think of to satisfy the needs of your visitors. Make it easy to business with you, and they will do business with you. Of course doing all of this within the constraints of a quality, professional and trustworthy user experience.

Measuring this effort isn’t hard either, it’s the same metric affiliate networks use when reporting the success of program, Earnings Per Click. Clicks / Revenue = EPC. You could take it step further and create metrics like: Page Views / Revenue = Earnings Per Page View. And for you number nuts you can incorporate a jump script in which to measure affiliate site conversion .

Regardless of how you spin the numbers it’s important to offer your site visitors what they need. Looking at click paths, organic entry terms and site behavior you can begin to devise your website experience model.

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