Getting to average clicks to a specific page

[clee510]

what is the best way to calculate the average clicks to the first interaction of a particular page? We want to understand how many clicks it takes visitors on average to get to page A and optimize the site experience to reduce the number of clicks it takes to get to page A regardless of where they are on the site. 

Thanks

[c_grant_aa]

I have to agree with clee510 that this would be a valuable thing to have.  "average clicks to page" is useless.  It's the first "discovery" of a page that matters for business purposes.

I've seen an obscure reporting package that was able to identify the first instance of a page in a visit.  The valuable metrics were "how many clicks to their first view of the page" and "where did they go from that page, the first time they encountered it."  I hope others can see the value of this.

[brian_au]

I would recommend posting this idea or upvoting if it exists already in the Idea Exchange:

http://ideas.omniture.com/

Best,

Brian

[c_grant_aa]

Aaah I have been looking for a link to that.  It's odd that there are no links to it in the forum ... or maybe I am missing it.

[brian_au]

Check out the Average Page Depth metric within the Pages report context. Reference info below:

https://marketing.adobe.com/resources/help/en_US/reference/metrics_av_page_depth.html

>>>

Average Page Depth

Displays on average how far within a visit each value was fired. This metric is valuable in determining how far within a visit your audience reaches a given page or prop value. Average Page Depth is available on any variable with pathing enabled.

For example, if a visit contains the following path: Page A > Page B > Page C > Page D > Page E > Page F, the depth is an index of where the page is. For example, "Page A" has a depth of 0, while "Page F." has a depth of five. The average is based on a combination of all visits. A page depth with a value of less than one (such as 0.9) is the mean value of all pages visited prior to the page in question.

Page Depth helps you understand where a given page typically falls in a user path, regardless of previous or next pages in this path. As such, it helps to provide insight into how the page fits into the overall picture of the user's experience on your site. This insight can be best seen on a Pages report.

Best,

Brian

[clee510]

Thank you. I actually did - both in ad hoc and in AA. However, i don't think this metric gets to what i am looking for. I primarily only want to understand the avg. clicks for the first instance to get to the product page, but the avg. path depth report takes into account all the instances when that page was visited in a given path. I know that in ad ahoc you can change the setting to omit recurring instances so it should only count the 1st instance, but even then - i don't see the #s change. I also question the validity of this report, b/c when i pull in the metric by page, i see some pages with xx,xxx. For one, i don't think visitors will do xx,xxx clicks and secondly its throwing off the avg. page depth metric.

[brian_au · Accepted solution]

The Count Repeat Instances option in AHA only governs sequential repeat instances. So it wouldn't wholly provide a way around what you are trying to do in only ever tracking against the first occurrence of a page. I haven't ever run into any issues with the page depth metric, but it does count every occurrence of the page to derive the average.

https://marketing.adobe.com/resources/help/en_US/reference/count_repeat_Instances.html

Count Repeat Instances

Specifies in ad hoc analysis whether instances are counted in reports. Meaning, if you have multiple sequential values for the same variable you can count them either as one or multiple instances of the variable.

For example, you might see repeat page reloads, which are the number of times that pages on your website are reloaded or refreshed during a single visit. This option lets you specify whether multiple hits on the same page are counted as one, or as multiple page views.

[AdamGreco]

Here is something you can try:

1. Set a custom success event when visitors perform the first instance of the page you care about (i.e. Product Page) and make sure it is only set on the 1st instance
2. Set a counter eVar to "+1" on each page and expire it at the event mentioned in step 1
3. Doing this should show you how many clicks it took for users (in aggregate) to reach that event and you will see a distribution by viewing the percentages associated with each row...

I have not tried this, so I cannot guarantee it will work, but it in theory, it should get you close to what you are looking for...