Back to work :)
While discussing bits that confuse the most in Omniture, one thing that popped up in a conversation was Page depth. Lets try to understand these and raise your hands if you don't!
Page Depth report is a REPORT, under Paths > Pages > Page Analysis, which tells you how many times a certain number of pages are visited before an 'event' occurs. Rows in the report denotes number of pages and figures against metrics tell you 'how many times'. So, if you choose Orders as a metric then row with 10 pages tell you how many times 10 pages were visited before an order was completed on your site. See a screen-shot of this report:
Please note that these pages are visited, not viewed so reloads are not counted.
What happens when you choose Visits metric for this report? This report, when uses Visits metric, works exactly same as Path length report i.e. it tells you the length of a visit which is same as how many pages were visited before a visit completed.
What this report means to me?: This report can be used to understand following user behaviour on your site:
1. Are more visitors visiting just 1 or 2 pages? If yes, which ones (use correlations for this)?
2. Normally registration on my site takes 5 steps. That's what you think! Report will help you what your visitors think. Exploring longer paths than expected will help you in optimizing your favourite journey. Assignment for you all if you can tell how this can be done (Hint: Discover by yourself!)
3. One interesting bit that I found was using this report to figure out how many visitors bookmark an order completion page and return back to check the order-details. This is my own finding, would love to understand how you use this report or others we discuss on this blog.
This makes sense now, doesn't it?
Now lets look at Average Page Depth, which is a METRIC. This metric is available in Pages report and is associated with a page. I need not say, this is completely different from Page Depth which is a report.
What is Average Page depth? This tells you how deep a page lies within a visit. For instance, if your visit is:
Page A > Page B > Page C > Page D
then for this particular visit, SiteCatalyst gives Page A depth value as 0 (zero), Page B will have page depth as 1 and so on. Page D will have page depth as 4. Ohh come'on Raj, stop kidding.
I was not kidding, or may be I was being me :). For SiteCatalyst, page depth of Page D will be 3, but Discover starts its page depth counting from 1 and that's why Page D will have page depth as 4 in Discover (I was not kidding!).
So why do they use word Average? Good question! In most of the cases, a page will be part of multiple visits i.e. a page was viewed in more than one visits. Now Adobe cannot show you page depth of a page for all the visits (can they?), so they take average of page depths of all occurrence for the page.
What happens if a page is visited more than once in a visit? For instance, what if scenario is like this:
Page A > Page B > Page B > Page C > Page D > Page B
Discover counts first instance of the page as its page depth and ignores others in the same visits. SiteCatayst counts every instance. Page depth in both these systems will be like this:
Page A > Page B > Page B > Page C > Page D > Page B
Discover: 1 2 - 3 4 -
SiteCatalyst: 0 1 2 3 4 5
So in Discover, Page B will have Average page depth 2
while in SiteCatalyst this will be: (1+2+5)/3 = 2.67
In SiteCatalyst, some pages may have Average page depth less than 1. These pages are normally landing pages of your site and as landing pages have page depth 0, the average may end up being less than 1.
Phewww!!!!
Why should I use this metric for? This metric can be used in 2 ways:
1. To find whether visitors are returning back to your landing pages, which can be identified if landing pages have high average page depth - in SiteCatalyst
2. To find which pages are acting as landing pages - pages with Average page depth as 1 in Discover
Will love to see your questions/comments on this one
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
VERY VERY IMPORTANT NOTE
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
After release of SiteCatalyst 14.9 and Discover 2.95, Adobe has made changes in Discover to behave exactly as SiteCatalyst to calculate Average Page depth!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What this report means to me?: This report can be used to understand following user behaviour on your site:
1. Are more visitors visiting just 1 or 2 pages? If yes, which ones (use correlations for this)?
2. Normally registration on my site takes 5 steps. That's what you think! Report will help you what your visitors think. Exploring longer paths than expected will help you in optimizing your favourite journey. Assignment for you all if you can tell how this can be done (Hint: Discover by yourself!)
3. One interesting bit that I found was using this report to figure out how many visitors bookmark an order completion page and return back to check the order-details. This is my own finding, would love to understand how you use this report or others we discuss on this blog.
This makes sense now, doesn't it?
Now lets look at Average Page Depth, which is a METRIC. This metric is available in Pages report and is associated with a page. I need not say, this is completely different from Page Depth which is a report.
What is Average Page depth? This tells you how deep a page lies within a visit. For instance, if your visit is:
Page A > Page B > Page C > Page D
then for this particular visit, SiteCatalyst gives Page A depth value as 0 (zero), Page B will have page depth as 1 and so on. Page D will have page depth as 4. Ohh come'on Raj, stop kidding.
I was not kidding, or may be I was being me :). For SiteCatalyst, page depth of Page D will be 3, but Discover starts its page depth counting from 1 and that's why Page D will have page depth as 4 in Discover (I was not kidding!).
So why do they use word Average? Good question! In most of the cases, a page will be part of multiple visits i.e. a page was viewed in more than one visits. Now Adobe cannot show you page depth of a page for all the visits (can they?), so they take average of page depths of all occurrence for the page.
What happens if a page is visited more than once in a visit? For instance, what if scenario is like this:
Page A > Page B > Page B > Page C > Page D > Page B
Discover counts first instance of the page as its page depth and ignores others in the same visits. SiteCatayst counts every instance. Page depth in both these systems will be like this:
Page A > Page B > Page B > Page C > Page D > Page B
Discover: 1 2 - 3 4 -
SiteCatalyst: 0 1 2 3 4 5
So in Discover, Page B will have Average page depth 2
while in SiteCatalyst this will be: (1+2+5)/3 = 2.67
In SiteCatalyst, some pages may have Average page depth less than 1. These pages are normally landing pages of your site and as landing pages have page depth 0, the average may end up being less than 1.
Phewww!!!!
Why should I use this metric for? This metric can be used in 2 ways:
1. To find whether visitors are returning back to your landing pages, which can be identified if landing pages have high average page depth - in SiteCatalyst
2. To find which pages are acting as landing pages - pages with Average page depth as 1 in Discover
Will love to see your questions/comments on this one
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
VERY VERY IMPORTANT NOTE
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
After release of SiteCatalyst 14.9 and Discover 2.95, Adobe has made changes in Discover to behave exactly as SiteCatalyst to calculate Average Page depth!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Interesting although I'm still slightly confused when I try to figure out what using"Average Page Depth (all visits) (AvPD)" is telling me exactly when placed against campaign codes in Discover..?
ReplyDeleteAm I right in saying that if:
Campaign A: AvPD = 4.88 & Visits = 55
Campaign B: AvPD = 30.96 & Visits = 29
Although campaign A has more Visits the traffic generated from campaign B is more engaged with the site as the visits have penetrated deeper into the site?
Thanks for sharing very good information about Omniture Site Catalyst.
ReplyDeleteApplication Development Outsourcing
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ReplyDeleteInteresting post on the page depth.
ReplyDeleteThe average page depth is a very useful metric that helps understand the user engagement with the site.Measuring such metrics is vital than just pageviews and referrers .
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