Every time a page is displayed on your Web site, it is an opportunity to make a sale, to build a relationship, or to deliver your marketing message. Do you treat each page view the way an airline values its airline seats, or the way a TV network uses its commercial time? We tend to think of Web pages as places, but, like airline trips and TV programs, they are turning into events.
Regular readers are familiar with the Web Conversion Cycle, a model that helps anyone determine the goals of a Web site so that visitor behavior can be determined and measured. The basics of conversion measurement are the so-called “look to buy” ratio—counting the number of visitors vs. the number of conversions.
In the days of static Web pages, this calculation was simple. Your Web metrics system could analyze any URL to understand how many visitors that viewed that URL also completed the conversion. For example, you might have an offer of 50% off the price of an enhanced sound system in a new car. How do you measure the success of that offer? With a static site, you just count the number of time the page was shown and count the number of times the coupon was printed.
But dynamic pages have changed everything. The metrics system can’t just count the page views of the URL anymore—each time that page is shown, it could contain a different offer on it. You can’t calculate the conversion rate when you don’t know how many impressions have been shown of the offer.
As metrics systems play catch-up with the possibilities of dynamic pages, a new factor is coming into play: personlaization. Not only can offers be randomly rotated on dynamic pages, but they can be changed based on less-than-random factors. Suppose visitors that have looked at that car site three times in the last week are the ones shown the sound system discount offer—because they are the most likely to print the coupon and buy that car from a local dealer. A personalized Web site can use information about the visitor to present the right offer at the right time.
Can your Web site personalize your visitor’s experience? More importantly, can you Web metrics system count when content is displayed, rather than just counting a page’s URL? Unless you can count the impressions of each unique piece of content displayed on a page, you can’t tell what a dynamic site’s conversion rates are.
When you start thinking of your pages as events—every page view can contain different content—you’ll never look at your Web metrics system the same way again.
