Google Analytics Exercise II

See brief in previous journal entry.

To kick the project off, I started by looking through the Google Merchandise Store, both the OS desktop display as well as exploring the mobile version. The mobile version was polished and easy to rummage through, though compared to the desktop website, not as many product and categories are displayed and advertised on the main page.

As you can see, the mobile version of the webpage appears to be much more animated and responsive than the desktop page, the desktop has more static product pictures that don’t ease in like the products in the mobile page does. However, a limited amount of items is displayed on the main page of the mobile site. It also seems like pretty different products are being advertised too! Where the desktop sites seem to be advertising more apparel, and the mobile site advertising more stationary products and other miscellaneous items.

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I began my quest to explore user-engagement with the desktop site compared to the mobile site, and investigating the relationship between these two devices.

Looking at the data provided by Google Analytics on usage across different devices, you can immediately observe that there is an overwhelming difference between Desktop and Mobile users on average. On Average (data provided what was collected between dates 19th through 25th of May), there is an average of 9,400 users out of 13,234 in comparison to a whopping 5,921 difference from the Mobile users, landing at 3,479 users only.

Insight from Comparison between Mobile and Desktop:

Looking at these numbers a little closer, I observed that despite the fact that there are way more users, visits, and sessions coming from the desktop, the category addressing the revenue the website makes (the income for the store), transactions made, and the e-commerce conversion rate is being dominated by the mobile users. To make sure that this was not just based on pure coincidence I looked into the statistics from the past month as well and noticed that there is indeed a pattern.

Because the exact price/revenue the company makes on the website does not necessarily distinguish which device/version of the website is doing better at prompting its users to buy their products (Because there could be less transactions on one version of the website but more revenue because desktop users are spending more money on more expensive products), I’m mainly focusing on the category of the E-commerce Conversion Rate. The E-commerce conversion rate is the percentage of sessions that resulted in an e-commerce transaction. To be simply put, it’s looking at how many users that visited the site actually purchased items.

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Analyzing the statistics drawn from the past 30 days, you notice that only 0.12% of the total site visitors actually purchase items from the store. Of those 0.12% of the total users (54,603), 0.27% of mobile users actually completed transactions (51 out of 15,409) and on the other hand only 26 out 37,814 desktop users complete their transactions, leaving them at 0.05%.

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We can make some assumptions for this phenomenon, why does it occur? The first thought I got was that the mobile version might have an interface easier to use based on how long it takes (how many presses) to complete a payment. I ran through the steps on my own on both the mobile version and the desktop version, faking a transaction. I noticed that it actually takes almost the same amount of clicks to get to the final payment page, the only difference being that when the desktop page redirects you to sign in to your google account first before completing the payment, and you complete signing in, you get redirected to the product page again, not even the shopping cart page. Every time you access the check out page, you need to re-sign-in, and this same thing occurs. It’s much quicker to sign in to your google account on your mobile app, it takes a simple click to select which google account you would like to use. On the desktop version you must key in information every use. So that might have been what severely delayed some transactions. Though in my opinion I don’t think a desktop user would first get redirected to sign in and give up to use the mobile version instead when the restarting of payment is prompted on the desktop screen.

I believe that this might not have anything to do with the interfaces of the two versions at all, I suspect it to be something else.

Most users consume content on their phones with greater ease. I use my phone for most tasks other than school related assignments such as research, programming, editing, and typing up essays, as it is much more convenient than using my computer, because I don’t carry my computer everywhere. Maybe the reason behind there being a larger traffic in terms of actually purchasing customers on the mobile version of the website simply because these mobile users saw some sort of advertisement outdoors on a billboard, or at a convention, and quickly purchased these items on the mobile phone because it’s more “convenient” to do so, than pulling out their laptops and computers. And most of the time, you only ever use desktop computers at work (which I suppose is when merchandise purchasing is NOT done), or at home, and people generally browse around and “window shop” on their computers more than on their mobile phones, maybe.

So this whole argument is based off of the assumption that people generally complete purchases on their phones more due to the fact that it’s far more convenient and easy to access on-the-go, in comparison to desktop users.

Suggesting an improvement to the store

Because I can’t really help the fact that a smartphone is designed to be easy to carry around and use in your hand and a desktop computer is not hence the reason why a lot of people resort to using phones for specific functions such as online shopping, I will simply discuss some slight changes that could be made to the desktop site to improve the overall performance.

Perhaps prompting the Google sign-in as soon as you enter the page will improve the efficiency of shopping significantly. One major question I have is, since the Google Merchandise Store is under Google, why isn’t it already automatically logged in to your Google account when you enter the page? I understand that some people might not have logged in to their Google account but I definitely did. Perhaps making that automatic would also increase the conversion rate and invite more users to want to stick around and purchase the item they put in their cart.

Another option is to have the option to proceed to checkout without logging in to your Google-account, it could potentially increase the buyer’s willingness to stay focused on complete the purchase. According to the Data & Prototypes Slides, Sales and Conversion Rates went up by 45% when given the option to not have to sign-in with an account to purchase items.

Making the main page of the website, making it more inviting, could also invite more users to stick around. Though according the the statistics, more sessions are partaken by desktop users. At the end of the day I can only argue that it’s a culture to shop on your phone because it’s easy to access on-the-go, whether you’re on the way to work and see billboards at your bus station, or if you see something while you’re roaming around in the streets or at a Google convention.

Reflection:

What kind of Data was this?

Quantitative Data! This type of data tells you what is happening (or not happening). It’s most commonly numerical data– percentages, numbers, etc.

In the context of a website, Google Analytics can tell you how many visitors has come to your website, how they got there and what actions they took. What this data doesn’t tell you is why. Why does a certain group of users take one action, while a different group prefer another? Why do people end up completing purchases on the mobile website more than the desktop one?

The ‘why’ aspect is of the highest importance because it opens the mystery of user logic. That’s when we turn to qualitative data.