Chapter 1: Measuring Performance
METRICS RELATIVE TO WHAT YOU SELL TO MEASURE WHAT USERS WANT
Core metrics are typically run site wide at session level, but product level metrics are incredibly valuable when you are optimising your offer to the customer. Across your catalogue, you will find hot zones where there are high clicks and engagement and similarly products that don’t get many views at all. These product relative metrics - because they are calculated by product views instead of sessions - act as indicators for customer browse across your offer as well as their intent to purchase. They are practical and action-focused so you can control the visibility of products and optimise the customer experience in your Product Listing Pages (PLPs) and Product Detail Pages (PDPs). If you visually merchandise products on your PLPs, these metrics will be your best friend in ensuring you prioritise both the right products to support as well as dedicate your time to the most engaged PLPs.
You will notice that some of the product relative metrics seem to duplicate the core metrics in the previous lesson, but because they are calculated differently, they yield very different data. For instance, unlike Session ATB, which measures add to bag rates per session, Product ATB focuses on a specific product’s add to bag rates per time it has been viewed. Assuming that most users will view more than one product per session, product relative metrics are naturally lower than their session counterparts.
Exposure
Product listing exposure is the sum of all product views in all product listings (PLPs), totaling the exposure of your offer across your site. When segmented by brand or category, this lets you know how visible a part of your catalogue is to your users, allowing you to increase or decrease exposure based on intent to purchase (ATW, ATB and CVR).
For instance, if a brand had very high exposure of its products in PLPs, but was getting a very low click through rate, it might suggest you should downweight its coverage in your visual merchandising to something that resonates more with users.
Browse
Browse is a measure of the number of products viewed per listing. The count of products is dependent on how far a user scrolls down the page.
BROWSE = EXPOSURE / PLP VIEWS
When segmented by specific PLP, this tells you how far customers browse in these pages. This will then be a key break point where you can curate an experience to maximise visibility to your audience, but not dedicate resources to visual merchandising beyond this point.
As a general rule, most users do not browse a PLP beyond the first page, so your browse metric will tell you just how far down the page they get. It’s common to find pages with lower browse rates are a more specified shopping journey for users, and engagement with filters or search can be higher due to the user already knowing what they’re looking for.
Product Listing Click Through (PLP CTR)
Product listing click through is a measure of how much a customer clicks on what they see browsing in a PLP.
PLP CTR = PRODUCTS VIEWED / PRODUCTS CLICKED
One of the key metrics that show you how hard your PLPs are working, this gives you a sense if what you’re showing a customer interests them. Lean into your high CTR pages for marketing and try to improve those not capturing clicks.
Product Views
Product views is effectively a page view metric, but specifically focused on PDPs. It is a key metric in calculating product relative metrics. As customers view more PDPs per session, you will see this metric grow. Generally, the more products they view per session, the greater chance of purchase.
Views for a particular product could spike due to direct traffic into that PDP from related marketing activity, like an email to your subscribers, or could also be because the product was highly ranked in a PLP.
Product Add to Wishlist (ATW)
Product Add to Wishlist is a measure of how often a product is added to a wishlist when it is viewed.
PRODUCT ATW = ADD TO WISHLIST / PRODUCT VIEWS
Adding to a wishlist means that the customer is not ready to purchase. There is significant overlap in using an actual wishlist vs the shopping bag to “save for later,” so ATW is just as important as ATB rates.
Product Add to Bag (ATB)
Product add to bag rate is a measure of the number of adds to bag per product viewed, rather than per session.
PRODUCT ATB = ADD TO BAG / PRODUCT VIEWS
Your add to bag rate just like your add to wishlist rate suggests an intent to purchase. When run as a rate it gives you and indication of how many product views it takes to start building the shopping bag. Compared to Session ATB, which tells you more general customer intent or interest in your product offer, Product ATB provides a more granular view at which products in particular they are adding to bag.
Product Conversion (CVR)
Product conversion rate is a measure of the number of units that are sold of a single item relative to how many views it gets. It can be inflated by products that tend to sell in multiple units per user.
PRODUCT CVR = UNITS SOLD / PRODUCT VIEWS
Conversion is the single most used measure of success of a website, and when run at product level it show you the success of your catalogue. This metric can show you if you are sending traffic to the right products.
A number of the above metrics are customised and not available from a standard integration of GA4 or Omniture. That’s not to say they are difficult to calculate! You just need to know how to build a custom metric, based on the formulas indicated above. Building these metrics will not be covered directly in this course, but are part of the Looker Studio dashboards that connect directly with GA4 properties.
LESSON SUMMARY
Product relative metrics measure performance in your PLPs and PDPs
When metrics run against product views as opposed to total sessions, they tend to be lower overall as users view multiple products per session
Product relative metrics follow the mid-funnel journey from viewing a product in PLP, to clicking through and then events related to intent to purchase such as add to bag or eventual purchase