Hey Experts!!
I write to you with a specific problem that has been taking over my mind since days now. I have tried to troubleshoot it and look at it from various angles but i am unable to find the answer. I know it is not right but cannot pinpoint the root of the issue.
My client is in the industry of education , it is a university to be precise. As per SiteCatalyst , the maximum conversions(form submits) are happening in visit number 1 . This seems very odd to me , since the conversion cycle for an education provider would be more than first visit by a prospect. One usually does some comparison shopping between universities before one decides to pay an application fee.
The visit number is based on the visitor id so i checked the s_vi cookie for this client(which is a first party cookie) and it is persisting since the first visit , so its not really dropping a new cookie every time. I tried through multiple browsers and different devices and the cookie persists if i have been through the same browser. What is interesting is that the visit number 1 visits are more than the return visits which ideally should never happen ( the reverse is still okay i believe but not this phenomena).
Of course there is multi-browsing and multi-device activities happening and people can delete their cookies too but 92% of conversions coming from visitnumber 1 is strangely odd to me. I checked some other clients on SiteCatalyst (retail , insurance) and they too have the maximum conversions coming in visit number 1. Am i not reading the report correctly? What am i missing?
Any direction will be very helpful. There are not many blog posts about visit number too...so i believe sharing the true benefits of this report will be helpful for all of us web analytic professionals too.
Thanks!!
Ashmita
