Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
as you can see, this report moves us beyond the ctr, as it does not impact this
metric; it also goes beyond the conversion metric since the value of the actual sale is
taken into consideration. in this case, we will optimize toward getting a better average
value of each visit sale action. Our task is to move the needle on $116.91.
Using the revenue per Visit metric, we have fixed a great deal of these potential
issues simply by taking into account the revenue of products sold. however, if you have
a great deal of sales that take place not in a single visit but over multiple visits, then
you will unfortunately still be prone to mis-optimizing.
this brings us to the next potential paid search optimization metric: revenue
per Visitor. this one promises to be almost everything we want. in situations where
you expect ongoing sales to existing visitors, you may considerably undervalue the
campaign, ad group, or search listing. Because it is obvious that optimization takes
place within a defined period of time, optimizing toward revenue per visitor can have
negative effects, such as failing to take into consideration the value generated over the
next coming sales.
the last optimization metric, lifetime Value of the Visitor, is definitely the hard-
est to implement and, quite frankly, something that you need to work hard to do in
yahoo! Web analytics. expect to do exports and use microsoft excel. See the follow-
ing post for more:
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http://visualrevenue.com/blog/2007/10/customer-lifetime-value-kpi.html
i would like you to leave this section with a couple of takeaways. First, think
hard about what optimization strategy you choose, and think hard about the potential
built-in limitations of that metric. Second, expect that you might have to choose a met-
ric because of limitations in your technology, and use that as sort of a proxy for what
you are really trying to do.
that said, if you are a traditional e-commerce property, why couldn't you just
use the lifetime Value of the Visitor metric all the time? the reason is that your site
might not have the volume to generate enough data for meaningful analysis and opti-
mization on that metric. you should then fall back and use something else as a proxy.
Optimizing Paid Search for a Content Site
you've seen that e-commerce is not really as straightforward to optimize as you might
have expected. if we then add to the equation the idea that we can analyze sites that
have no direct conversions (as in sales), things get trickier. Welcome to paid search
optimization for non-e-commerce sites: content sites.
i won't discuss all imaginable content site scenarios, so expect my advice to
serve as general pointers.
For me, optimizing paid search for content sites is all about proxies. By that, i
mean conversion proxies. this is almost as important as choosing the right optimiza-
tion metric when talking about e-commerce sites.
