Assessing a value of a page in Google Analytics (GA)

Question

I am analysing an information architecture using GA and am trying to qualify the worth or value of a page. There are certain metrics I have at my disposal such as unique views, bounce rates, exit rates and average time/page. Now, the value of a page is not one of these metrics but rather a combination of all of them. But I can't find any published research that mentions an equation I could use to establish this.

any stats or analysis gurus out there can offer their perspective or experience?

This is not about wider research methods. It is a very specific question about the validity of various mathematical combinations of page data metrics.

Answer 1

No publication will be able to tell you what your site needs to know to draw effective conclusions. You need to talk to the business side and learn what the business goals are, then translate those into measurable elements. Based on what you learn you can then look at the available data and extrapolate something from that.

Google Analytics might also not be enough. All it does is tells you things about people visiting your site, but it can't tell you what they're doing. You need internal metrics for that. So find out from the business layer if they have any measurements going (or talk to the DBA and see if you can run some queries on the database). Then you can learn more about whether people are eg. converting well, sticking around, etc.

Ultimately the point is that you seem to be looking for a hard and fast answer on what to do, and there isn't one. You need to find out what to do by learning about what the most valuable metrics are and you can only do that by talking to the rest of the business.

Answer 2

Google Analytics has recently re-introduced its page value metric, was $index in the old version of GA.

It's a helpful guideline to how a page is contributing to your site's revenue, calculated like so:

Page Value = (Transaction Revenue + Total Goal Value) / Unique Pageviews for the page

Note that a page's value is only increased by revenue or goal value taking place later in the visit then the pageview, not earlier.

More information here: http://analytics.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/understanding-and-using-page-value.html

Answer 3

I recently caught "Attribution Evolution", a 30-minute presentation given by Neil Hoyne (Global Program Manager, Attribution at Google) which deals with attributing value/usefulness to each segment in the path users take to a conversion. It may be germane to the problem.

(Even though it's a year late, it may be useful to someone.)

Disclaimer: the talk is formula-free.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuMhtVYPiRE

Answer 4

Analitics 2.0 by Avinash is a book you should read.

When assesing value in analytics you need to know adquisition, behavior and goals data. So, analize at last: cost of visitor adquisition, segment of visits staying more than 5s, and micro and macro conversions.