Quantifying results

[japancool]

I recently added descriptions to my in-stock products. I'm using more or less the same descriptions as the other sites in my industry (descriptions written by one of my suppliers), just with a slight change from American English to British English.

I'd like to try and quantify the effects of this change, if I can. The problem is, it's coincided with an influx of stock, which in itself normally results in a jump in the number of sales and site visits.

What would be the best way to try and strip out the effects of the latter? I have seen a doubling of my Google Shopping CTR for my free listings, but that isn't actually saying much - I had too few clicks for it to be statistically significant IMO.

 

[WebshopMechanic]

If you've added descriptions to your pages you could have seen an improvement in conversion and an uplift in organic traffic due to improved SEO.

Within Google Analytics you should be able to see:

• Time on page - This determines page engagement so you can see if people are stating to read it
• Bounce rate - This will give you an idea on whether the page has become more effective to lure people deeper into the site. Again, engagement.
• Page Value - You can measure this against what it was before. See: Behaviour > Site Content > Enter Page
• Page Conversion Rate Per Product - See Conversions > Ecommerce > Product Performance and you will be able to measure conversion rate % per product. If you look at the before and after it will give you an idea of whether the changes made any impact.

Hope that helps.

Matt

 

[japancool]

Time on page - This determines page engagement so you can see if people are stating to read it

That's a great one to look at, thanks!

I'll have a look at the other metrics as well. Page conversion though is, unfortunately, not a great metric for my products - that's almost entirely driven by the popularity of the product in question, but there is still value in looking at it.

 

[Fagin2021]

That's a great one to look at, thanks!

I'll have a look at the other metrics as well. Page conversion though is, unfortunately, not a great metric for my products - that's almost entirely driven by the popularity of the product in question, but there is still value in looking at it.

'Time on page' - especially 'average time on page' can be very misleading due to the way Google calculates the metric.

In brief, Google timestamps the page you visit, then timestamps the next page you visit and the TOP is calculated as the difference between the two. That's fine, unless the page of interest is the last page visited, in which case there's no subsequent timestamp so Google reports the time as zero.

If your page's bounce rate (another dodgy metric) is high, your TOP will probably be high too. Also, if you visit a page then open another tab, then later return to the original page, the clock is still running, even though you are not actually reading that page.

You might consider whether it's really worth worrying about anyway. It obviously makes sense and can only be beneficial to re-write your product descriptions in British English, so what do you have to gain from proving it with analytics ? You'd normally A/B test to see which works better but in this case it's got to be a slam dunk for British English.

Sorry - did that sound a bit school-mama-ish ? It's late and I'm tired.

 

[japancool]

You might consider whether it's really worth worrying about anyway. It obviously makes sense and can only be beneficial to re-write your product descriptions in British English, so what do you have to gain from proving it with analytics ? You'd normally A/B test to see which works better but in this case it's got to be a slam dunk for British English.

I'm not trying to prove if British English works better than American English. I'm trying to understand what difference having product descriptions makes vs having no product descriptions.

 

[Fagin2021]

I'm not trying to prove if British English works better than American English. I'm trying to understand what difference having product descriptions makes vs having no product descriptions.

Ah - I misunderstood your intent. However, given the difficulty eliminating the other variables I'd fall back on the common-sense view that having a product description is better than none.

An interesting split test would be to distinguish between...

1. No product description
2. One written in American English
3. One written in British English
4. One that actually answers the visitors questions as opposed to the techno-babble so beloved of domestic and foreign manufacturers.

Of course, you'd need a big sample size.

 

[The Byre]

If someone is about to part with folding money for a product, they want to know as much as is reasonably possible about that product. Famous copywriters like Ogilvy, Caples, Bird and many others always stress the importance of telling the customer as much as possible about a product. Long copy sells!

Seven things -

1. Harvest email addresses - offer something in return like a newsletter to remind them to come back.
2. Have really good pictures.
3. Have informative video content.
4. Stress the benefits of the product.
5. Clear contact details easily found.
6. Easy to navigate website.
7. Test, test and then test again.

 

[japancool]

Seven things -

1. Harvest email addresses - offer something in return like a newsletter to remind them to come back.
2. Have really good pictures.
3. Have informative video content.
4. Stress the benefits of the product.
5. Clear contact details easily found.
6. Easy to navigate website.
7. Test, test and then test again.

Yes, all the usual gubbins. What I'm not looking for here is "how do I make my website super-duper awesome-o SEO", what I'm trying to do is quantify the effects of making a change.

My customers fall broadly into two categories. Those who are fans of the TV series, and are looking for a specific model, and those who are modellers, who may or may not be fans, who are looking for a nice model kit to build. Most get their information about the kits from bloggers, magazines and other builders, and already know roughly what they want. I want to try and figure out if the descriptions make a lot of difference for them.

I suspect the answer is, not a lot, but I want to try and put it into figures (no pun intended).

It does, as I said, make a difference to the CTR coming from Google Shopping, but that sample size is way too small to draw any conclusion from.