Monetizing Non-Ecommerce Sites

By Brian Clifton

For non-ecommerce web sites, understanding and demonstrating website value is key to obtaining buy-in from upper management. With executive support, you will be able to procure investment for content, infrastructure, and online marketing. Many executives' eyes glaze over when they see yet another set of charts on visitor metrics. "Our site does not sell anything, so who cares?" is a common response. However, identifying the monetary value of your visitor sessions is a proven way of getting executive attention and can help keep the company website from becoming just someone's pet project.

Google Analytics provides two mechanisms for demonstrating website monetary value: (1) assigning goal values and (2) enabling ecommerce reporting for your non-ecommerce site.

How much is it worth?

The key to both approaches lies in knowing how much goal conversions are worth to your business. If a PDF brochure is downloaded 1000 times and you estimate that 1 of these 1000 downloads results in a customer with an average order value of $1000, then each download is worth $1. Equally, if 1 in 100 downloads converts into a customer, each PDF download is worth $10.

For each goal, you simply need to ask yourself, how many of these goal conversions does it take to create a customer and what is the average value of that customer? The Goals section shows how many conversions you get to each of your site goals. Initially, you'll need to estimate the percentage of goal conversions that result in paying customers, but you'll be able to fine-tune your estimates as you collect information. Once you can estimate the value of each of your site goals, it is straightforward to monetize your website.

First Approach: Assign values to your goals.

Every site has at least one goal and quite often has several. A non-ecommerce site may have downloadable files and PDF documents, product demonstrations, brochure requests, quote requests and subscription signups. Even the humble mailto link (email address link) can be considered a goal and clicks on the mailto link can be tracked in Google Analytics as goal conversions.

Assigning a goal value is very simple. (Read How do I setup goals? in the Google Analytics Help Center.) Adding values to goals allows you to see metrics such as Per Visit Goal Value. However, you can get far more detailed reporting by using the technique outlined in the second approach, below.

Second Approach: Enable ecommerce reporting for your non-ecommerce site.

By setting up your non-ecommerce site as an ecommerce site in Google Analytics, you'll be able to see the:

• total amount of "revenue" you receive each day
• amount of time and number of visits it takes for visitors to convert
• breakdown of how much each "product" (i.e. goal) contributes to revenue
• list of specific "transactions" (i.e. specific goal conversions)

These are just a few examples of what you will see. By using this approach, you'll gain additional aggregate information as well as more specific goal and goal conversion information. Effectively, the ecommerce module is a profile in itself - just for your goal converters.

So how does one go about tracking a non-ecommerce site as though it were an ecommerce site? First, you'll need to tag each goal page with ecommerce tracking information. This is described in the Google Analytics Help Center article How do I track e-commerce transactions?

Some of the fields shown in the article you will obviously leave blank. Let's assume, for example, that one of your goals is a click on a mailto link. The visitor clicking on mailto doesn't leave their name or address and so, you won't be able to collect this information. So, the content of the hidden form fields may look something like this:

a. Pseudo ecommerce form fields for mailto link goal

<form style="display:none;" name="utmform">
<textarea id="utmtrans">
UTM:T|[order-id]||1|||||
UTM:I|[order-id]|[sku/code]|Email link|Contact|1|1
</textarea>
</form>

Most of these fields are blank (we don't know the shipping address of someone who simply clicks on your email link!), but here we have assigned a value of $1 and a quantity of 1 (note that you can change the currency settings in the profile preferences). You could also complete the product name and category. You would, of course, put values for order-id and SKU code, but I have left these 'as is' for clarity.

b. Pseudo ecommerce form fields for PDF download

<form style="display:none;" name="utmform">
<textarea id="utmtrans">
UTM:T|[order-id]||10|||||
UTM:I|[order-id]|[sku/code]|PDF Brochure|Download|10|1
</textarea>
</form>

Here a PDF document download has been given a value of $10, the quantity remains 1.

c. Pseudo ecommerce form fields for contact form

<form style="display:none;" name="utmform">
<textarea id="utmtrans">
UTM:T|[order-id]||5||[shipping]|[city]|[state]|[country]
UTM:I|[order-id]|[sku/code]|Form Completed|Contact|5|1
</textarea>
</form>

In this last example, I have assumed a value of $5 per request. I've also assumed that your contact/request form asks for the address details of the visitor so that these fields can be completed. Consult with your web designer/developers for the actual name of the form fields used on your form and how to extract the values from them.

Next, you need to decide how to call these values into Google Analytics. You can do this using the javascript:__utmSetTrans() function.

For the above examples you would probably use:

1. <a href = "mailto:email@address.com" onClick = "javascript:__utmSetTrans()">
2. <a href = "file.pdf" onClick = "urchinTracker('downloads/file.pdf'); javascript:__utmSetTrans()">
3. <form action = "formhandler.cgi" onSubmit = "javascript:__utmSetTrans()">

Note the use of urchinTracker here. This is not directly related to what we wish to achieve, but should be used as a best practice technique.

Approach #2 provides significant benefits.

By emulating an ecommerce site, you can easily see, for example, the total number of goal conversions (transactions). If you were using Approach #1, you would need to add up each goal total manually.

Also, you can see at a glance the referring sources that lead to goal conversion, latency and recency, average order value, and which keywords convert best. If you wish to track fifty PDF whitepapers, a mailing list subscription, quote request form and "contact us" form, you'll find Approach #2 much more efficient and informative!

b. Pseudo ecommerce form fields for PDF download