Yahoo! Web Analytics Tip #1

By now, most of you have heard about Yahoo!'s introduction of the new Yahoo! Web Analytics to 13,000 of it's 45,000 stores. As a Yahoo! Developer, Ventura Web Design is lucky enough to be a part of the beta of this program. We even went up to Yahoo!'s HQ to learn right from the programmers who built the program. Let's just say, it's a great tool that everyone needs.

Today's blog entry is a tip on how to effectively utilize the mountains of data that Yahoo! Web Analytics provides.

PRODUCT CONVERSION BY SKU
1) To find this, you would look under the marketing tab on your left menu. Merchandising > Merchandising Summary.
2) You are now at the Product Conversion by SKU chart. (By the way, many of you wonder what SKU stands for. The answer? Stock Keeping Unit).
3) The next thing that I like to do is arrange the results per page to 50, using the pull down menu to the upper right of the table.
4) Then, I arrange the products by most visited. Do this by clicking the down arrow above Product Views.

You will now see the pages with the highest visits. To the right, you'll see the number of Add to Cart, Add to Cart complete (purchases).

We are going to focus on the visits/purchases ratio. Say, for example, the top result in your report shows 50 page visits in the last week, but only 4 add to carts, and then only 2 add to cart completes.

There is no magic number for a visits/purchases ratio, so you will have to first look for outliers in your data. The example above of 50/4/2 shows an item that raises some questions. Why are there so many window shoppers? Is the product just so popular that people like to come look at the picture? Are people coming to the page for product info, and then calling to make their purchase? Worse, are customers not finding what they want and leaving your site forever?

You can see that many questions arise while looking at this report. I believe that this report is a good way for you to increase your overall sales, simply by listening to your customers. Your customers are telling you that something is wrong with this page, and that's why they're not buying right away.

Some things that you might want to check for are:
1) Is the description adequate? Are all of my questions about the product answered?
2) Do I need additional pictures to show the product's many attributes?
3) Do I need to add technical information about the product?
4) Do I need to provide usage ideas for the product?
5) Should I add product reviews / are their bad reviews of the product?


Another interesting thing to point out. Yahoo! Web Analytics refers to these items shown as "Products by SKU." It is important to note that these are not listed by SKU, but by PageID. Your Page ID is equivalent to the XXXXXX.html portion of your web address. For example, the Page ID of http://www.scentsandsprays.com/trhoglca.html is only trhoglca. You can find this item within your editor by using the "find" button and searching for trhoglca.

I hope this helps everyone get started utilizing their Analytics. Don't feel overwhelmed. The stats are there to help you improve.

As always, if you have a specific question, please don't hesitate to write to me at Kevin@venturawebdesign.com. I will definitely reply to your question, and we may even use it as a Q/A here on SEORTML.com.