Visitors Who Look at Prices and Leave

The page everyone visits and leaves

In many small business Analytics accounts, the prices page sits near the top of two lists: the most visited pages and the most common exit pages.

Owners tend to read that one way. People looked at the prices, did not like them, and left.

Sometimes that is what happened. Just as often the visitor got what they came for: a number to compare, confirmation that the price was what they expected, or the phone number at the bottom of the page.

The exit figure alone cannot tell those apart. The rest of Analytics can, with a little reading.

Two visits that both end on prices

One visitor searches for prices, lands on the page, reads for a minute, taps the phone number and books. In Analytics, that visit ends on the prices page.

Another arrives on the home page, clicks through to a service, opens prices and leaves within seconds. That visit also ends on the prices page.

Same exit, opposite outcomes. Separating them is the whole job.

What to look at

• How visitors arrived, from a search, an ad or another page on the site.
• The previous page, for visitors who reached prices from inside the site.
• The next page, for the ones who did not leave.
• The device, since a phone visitor who leaves may have just called.
• New or returning, since people comparing prices often come back later.
• Taps on the phone number, if they are recorded as events.

The last changes the picture most. Without it, a call made from the prices page looks exactly like a visitor who gave up.

Reading the Navigation Summary

In Analytics, open the All Pages report in the Behaviour section and click the prices page. The Navigation Summary tab shows the pages visitors came from and the pages they went to next.

Visitors who enter the site on the prices page, usually from a search, are mostly comparison shoppers. They came for a number, and many will leave whatever it is.

Visitors arriving from a service page, after reading about the work, are closer to a decision. If they leave within seconds, the price surprised them, or the page did not answer what they needed.

Next pages count too. Moving on to contact, booking or directions is progress; going back to the home page often means they are still looking for something.

Time on page is half missing

Analytics measures time on a page from the moment it opens to the moment the next page opens. When a page is the final one in a visit, nothing follows it, and no time is recorded.

On a page where most visits end, the average comes only from the people who carried on. An exit-heavy prices page can look barely read when it was read closely.

Events fill the gap. Taps on the number or the booking button, recorded as events, show what time on page cannot: that the visitor reached that point and acted.

A worked example

A golf driving range on the edge of a city has covered bays open all year. It sells buckets of balls, monthly passes and lessons, and its prices page lists all three.

Each spring that page is the most visited after the home page and the most common exit. The owner read it as a pricing problem and considered cutting lesson rates.

The Navigation Summary told another story. Most visits began on the prices page itself, on phones, in the evening, from searches about bucket prices and hours.

Those visitors wanted the cost of a bucket before driving over. Leaving was the natural end of the visit.

The group worth worrying about was smaller: visitors who came from the lessons page, opened prices and left within seconds. The lessons were listed as one line per package, with nothing on length, content or who teaches.

Each package got a sentence on how long it runs and what it covers. The phone number moved to the top of the lessons section with a line about booking a first lesson, and taps on it became an event.

Bucket prices stayed exactly where they were. Those visitors were already getting what they came for.

Changes that keep the right people moving

Say what each price includes. A number without its contents invites the worst assumption about what is missing.

Put the next step on the prices page itself: the phone number, a booking link, the hours. A visitor who is ready should not have to go looking.

And keep the prices visible. Hiding them to force a call loses the visitors who only wanted a number, and annoys the ones who call before the conversation starts.

Some exits are the right result

Some visitors should leave. A business whose prices reflect experience, insurance and guarantees will always lose people looking for the cheapest option, and a prices page that loses them early saves everyone a phone call.

The aim is not fewer exits. It is making sure the people who leave were never going to buy, and the people who were do not leave for want of an explanation.

What they searched before arriving

Analytics no longer shows most search words, but Search Console does. In its Search Analytics report, filter by the prices page and look at the queries that led there.

Queries with price, cost or how much in them come from people comparing. Queries naming a particular service come from people closer to choosing, and those are the visitors the page has to satisfy.

The counter-case

On a small site that sees only a few hundred visitors in a month, the prices page may get too little traffic for these splits to mean much. The questions callers ask are better evidence there.

Businesses that quote every job individually have no prices page to read. The same approach applies to whichever page explains how quoting works.

Everywhere else: read where visitors came from and went next, record the taps, and fix the page for the people who were close to deciding.

Before cutting a price

1. Open the prices page in the All Pages report.
2. Check the Navigation Summary for previous and next pages.
3. Split the visits by device and source.
4. Record phone taps as events.
5. Say what each price includes.
6. Put the next step beside the prices.
7. Annotate the change and compare next season.

Step four changes how every later report reads. Until taps are recorded, each call from the prices page looks like a visitor who gave up.

Tracing a sudden rush of visitors to its source takes the same kind of reading, covered in a spike in visits that came from one link.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.