4 Essential Metrics for Analysing eCommerce Landing Pages in Shopify

An eCommerce landing page acts as the initial point of interaction for a visitor on a website, specifically crafted with a clear purpose such as showcasing a product or capturing customer details. 

The effectiveness of a landing page is crucial as it forms the first impression for customers arriving from ads or external links. To ensure it resonates with visitors' expectations, the landing page must be compelling and relevant to their interests. A well-designed eCommerce landing page not only elevates the user experience but also plays a pivotal role in boosting customer engagement and improving conversion rates.

This article provides a comprehensive guide to understanding and analysing your top landing pages on Shopify. We will outline how to construct and evaluate a detailed report to gain insights faster.

‍Key Metrics 

When analysing your top landing pages on Shopify, using key metrics such as purchase funnel metrics, average session duration, bounce rate, and conversion rate provides detailed insights into customer interactions and the effectiveness of your eCommerce strategy. Each of these metrics can help identify where improvements are necessary and highlight the strengths of your site. Here’s how you can use these metrics to optimise your top landing pages:

1. Purchase Funnel Metrics

By examining how visitors move through the purchase funnel—from adding items to their carts to reaching checkouts and ultimately converting—you can identify bottlenecks and friction points in the customer journey. For instance:

• Added to Carts: If many visitors add products to their carts, this suggests that your landing pages effectively showcase your products. A low number might indicate that your call-to-action (CTA) buttons are not prominent enough or that product information is lacking.
• Reached Checkouts: This metric helps you understand whether your checkout process is streamlined. A drop-off between cart additions and checkouts might suggest that the checkout process is too complicated or that additional costs (like shipping) are a deterrent.
• Sessions Converted: This directly measures your landing page’s effectiveness in driving sales. Low conversion rates here could point to issues with trust, such as inadequate payment options or insufficient product validation (like reviews).

2. Average Session Duration

This metric gives insights into user engagement. High average session durations on your landing pages might indicate that visitors are interested and engaging with your content, which is a positive sign of potential conversion. Conversely, very short sessions may suggest that the content is not engaging or relevant enough, or that page load times are slow, prompting visitors to leave.

3. Bounce Rate

Analysing the bounce rate of your landing pages can indicate how well they capture the interest of visitors. A high bounce rate generally indicates that the page content is not what visitors expected or that the page is not sufficiently compelling to keep them engaged. Optimising landing page content to more closely match visitor expectations and improving the visual appeal can help reduce the bounce rate.

4. Conversion Rate

Conversion rate is crucial for measuring the success of your landing pages in persuading visitors to take a specific action. It helps determine the effectiveness of your page layout, CTAs, product descriptions, images, and overall site trustworthiness. Enhancing these elements can lead to higher conversion rates. For instance, testing different CTA button colours, positions, and messages can provide insights into what drives conversions on your pages.

How to Analyse Your Landinge Page Conversion Rate In Shopify‍

1. In Shopify go to Analytics > Reports
2. Search for the Sessions by landing page report
3. To get the same report as above, add the following columns
   1. Average session duration 
   2. Bounce rate
   3. Conversion rate
4. You can select ‘Save as’ to view this report later

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Apply a filter to capture landing pages that contain /collections/  or /products/ 

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Example Collection Page Performance - This brand has a 2.20% conversion rate across collection pages

Example Product Page Performance - This brand has a 3.12% conversion rate across product pages

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Example Analysis - Marketing to Landing Page Conversion

Upon setting your benchmarks (for instance, if your product pages typically achieve an average conversion rate of 3%), review each top page to determine areas for improvement or concern. Consider the example below of a product with a 1.62% conversion rate; a deeper investigation is warranted.

To analyse this further, filter by the landing page path you want to review. Then update your report to include the 'Referrer source',  ‘Referring type’ and ‘Referrer site’ columns and simplify it by removing some purchase funnel metrics. Your Report should look like the following.

This report shows that the bulk of traffic to this page originates from Facebook ads, with a 74% bounce rate and a 0.95% conversion rate.

While the conversion rate of 0.95% might be satisfactory if the primary goal is to boost site visits and enhance brand awareness, it's important to reassess this figure to ensure it aligns with the intended outcomes.

To address these concerns, it is advisable to review the paid social strategy and analyse heatmaps for this landing page. Such measures will provide deeper insights into user behaviours and interactions, helping to pinpoint areas for improvement and ensure the landing page effectively meets marketing objectives.

Conclusion

This report is an effective starting point for uncovering and understanding your customer journey on Shopify. Utilising tools like GA4 and Microsoft Clarity in conjunction with this report will provide a holistic view of your site's performance, enabling you to make informed decisions and drive improvements.