How to analyze conversion rate

Is it a Problem of Context?

The first thing to do is to check when this event occurred and on which device. A quick way to view your key metrics is through Dashboards, which provides a personalized interface for tracking KPIs all in one place.

1. If you haven't created a Dashboards, easily set one up using built-in templates. Access the 'Personalized Dashboards' tile in the 'Suggested for you' section on your Homepage or navigate to the Dashboards. Begin with the 'Site overview' template for automatic population of your key metrics.

Learn how to create your first Dashboards and analyze your data using the Site Overview dashboard template.

2. Apply the segment “All Visitors” and select the period “Last 30 days” or any relevant time frame

3. Compare the Conversion Rate by device using Comparison Mode

Identify the date of the drop

Using the line graph you can identify the date where the conversion rate dropped.

Is there any context that could explain the decrease during that particular time period?

Common reasons include: sales have boosted the conversion rate in a previous period, site went down...

Is there a major change in the user's journey?  

Compare the Journey Analysis before and after the drop, using 2 tabs.

• Is there a new landing page, or one that didn't have as many visitors landing before?
• Are there undefined pages?
• Are visitors having issues in the checkout funnel? (Why not read our article on funnels?)

If you note any major changes you can start analyzing these pages immediately. In particular;

• Map your undefined URLs
• Create a segment of visitors who saw a landing page THEN another page (if problematic or looping behavior has increased)
• Jump straight to session replay of a problematic journey (such as hitting error pages, or exiting after the checkout).

Otherwise, go deeper with the following.

Is it a Problem of Retention?

Apply the segment “Non-bounce visits” in your Dashboards: is the drop in conversion still observed?

• If the drop in Conversion Rate is no longer evident, it means that once your visitors have entered the website, they convert as per normal. The problem is related to retention (see Why did my bounce rate increase or Campaign analysis for acquisition issues).
• If the drop is still observed, it’s either a performance or reach issue, keep reading...

Are Users Struggling to Reach Strategic Pages?

Make a summary table of page reach

Your visitors may be reaching less strategic pages than they used to. To identify problematic pages, you will need to write down each page reach. (Do so only for the device you identified as problematic).

• Create the goal: ”Page XX is reached”
• Go to your Dashboards
• Apply the segment: “Non-bounce visits”
• Use comparison mode to compare the time after the top with an equal amount of time before the drop
• Select the goal you’ve just created as the Conversion Goal

Your end result should be similar to this table:

	Before the drop	After the drop	Variation before and after the drop
PLP Reach	72.5%	68%	-6%
PDP Reach	33.5%	20.5%	-38% ⚠️
Cart Reach	21.8%	18.4%	-16%
Checkout Reach	10%	8%	-20%

In the above example, the problematic reach is the PDP as it lost 38%.

Spot the impacted page

Now that you've listed down the different page reach percentages, you will be able to identify the impacted page by seeing which reach changed dramatically between the two analysis periods.

Which pages lead to this impacted page?

Now that you have identified which page is less reached than it used to be, let’s find out why.

Generally, the problem lies in the flow that should come from the previous pages of the funnel, that has suddenly dropped. These blockers are called bottlenecks.

e.g. if your PDP reach has dropped by 38%, you might want to look at your PLP to PDP reach difference OR at your Homepage to PDP reach difference.

⇨ To identify the problematic pass rate, you will need to write down the most important flows that are supposed to occur before your impacted page is reached.

• On Page Comparator, favorite all pages leading to the impacted page.
• Select the Comparison mode & choose the appropriate period of time.
• Select the conversion goal (e.g. “Reach PDP”).

Impacted page identified	Reaches to check
PLP	Homepage's reach of PLP
PDP	Homepage's reach of PDP PLP's reach of PDP
Cart	PDP's reach of Cart PLP's reach of Cart
Checkout	Cart's reach of Checkout PDP's reach of Checkout
Confirmation Page	Checkout's reach of Conversion

Has a conversion goal dropped? If so, then you have found the bottleneck! The next section will help you spot the problematic zone.

Example

We identified that the PDP is the impacted page...

We analyzed:

• the Home Page's reach of PDP before, and after the drop (figure 1)
• the PLP's reach of PDP before and after the drop (figure 2)

Figure 1

Figure 2

The highest drop comes from the Homepage: it is the page responsible for the drop in conversion.

Which Elements on the Page are Responsible for the Underperformance?

Now that we know where the bottleneck comes from, we want to identify what went wrong.

• Go to Zoning Analysis, select the bottleneck page and apply the segment “Non-Bounce Visits”
• Check the performance after click: select the Conversion Goal “reached impacted page”
• Enable Comparison Mode: select the period of time when you identified the drop in conversion, and compare it with a period when everything was normal.

Example

Check the "PDP reach after click" on the homepage.

We can see here that the top banner is one of the elements primarily responsible for the drop in the PDP reach.

Why is this affecting the conversion rate?

For some zones it might be obvious why conversion has dropped. For example, high click recurrence on unclickable elements, or elements that should only take 1 click.

However, others may not be as clear, particularly if you don't think you've made any changes. 

To clarify what's happening, you can right-click on a zone to access the shortcut menu  and jump to a session replay for visitors who interacted here.

How can I prevent this?

Unfortunately, you can't. However, you can set up AI Alerts so you are aware if conversion drops again, and be alerted the next day.

You could also consider creating a Dashboards to monitor the conversion rate from one page to the next. By applying a comparison over time, or using line graphs, you can monitor whether there have been any large changes.