The reports provide merchants access to a variety of useful data. Despite their riches of data, not all sellers are aware of what each column means and how to apply the data.
There are two columns that cause a good sense of confusion as they seem to represent the same thing. These columns are:
Sessions and Pageviews.
Although these two columns seem similar but they are not. In this article, we will discuss how these two stats are different and how you can interpret them.
Amazon Sessions Explained
Let’s begin with the definition of “Amazon session”. A session can be confusing for the newer sellers. The term is not as straightforward as say page views.
Session is the number of unique visits to your Amazon pages by a user within a 24 hours period
Noticed that I highlighted unique, if, within a 24 hours period, I click on a Amazon product listing, then 2 hours later, I click on the listing again this will count as one session.
In a real-life example, you visited Rick’s Super Gym just for a tour. You won’t be working out in this gym right away as you are just window shopping for a gym membership. After visiting multiple gyms, you decided on getting a membership at Rick’s Super Gym 5 hours later. Although I went through the door at Rick’s Super Gym twice its still counted as One Session.
What are Pageviews on Amazon?
Now know what session, pageviews are probably more obvious.
Pageview is the number of hits in your Amazon listing gets for the selected time period
The number of visitors to your Amazon listing is measured in page views. When a shopper visits your listing many times, the total number of times is added together as page views. Pageviews are NOT unique.
Going back to our Rick’s Super Gym example. Since we went through the door twice in this example the pageview is 2.
Amazon Sessions vs Pageviews
A customer’s visit to Amazon pages is referred to as a session. Even if a client shopper visits a number of pages many times (within 24 hours) during a visit, it will be counted as one session. The number of times a client viewed a page is referred to as page views. A client can browse multiple pageviews in a single session. As a result, now I am going to state the obvious.
The relation between Pageviews and Session will always be:
Pageviews > Sessions
Since the session is counting the unique visits where the pageview is not. You will rarely run into situations where sessions will match pageviews exactly
Amazon Sessions vs Pageviews Variations
You also can use these two metrics to see which variations are more popular. You do this by going into the business reports, select “Detail Page Sales and Traffic By Child Item”, then sort by the column “(Parent) ASIN”. You can see all the child ASINs and their corresponding parent ASIN together. Here you can see which child ASINs have more pageviews to help you make an informed decision on your product category (related blog post on Amazon brand analytics).
Page Views per Session: A Measure of Customer Engagement
When evaluating the relationship between pageviews and sessions, consider pageviews per session as an engagement metric. This ratio shows how many of your product listings an average Amazon shopper visits during a single session.
Higher pageviews per session indicate that shoppers are interacting with many of your listings. On the one hand that’s a good thing because they are probably comparing your different products before deciding which one to buy, but on the other hand it may also indicate that it may be difficult for them to understand the different unique selling points (USPs) between your various products.
So what a healthy session-to-pageview metric is depends on:
Your sales price
How much your ASINs differ
Are you selling a high- or low-involvement product?
More on how to interpret this data in the next section.
Interpreting Amazon Sessions vs Pageviews on your Business Report
As mentioned, Page views per session are an indication of how many touchpoints your customer needs before making a purchase.
You need to think of this from a shopper’s perspective. Does your product require multiple touchpoints?
For example, a shopper will probably need to do a lot more product research for a $400 baby stroller than a $15 baby bib. Hence, the logic will be the listing for the baby stroller will have a higher pageview per session than the baby bib.
You also need to look into correlations. Ask the following questions:
Does having a product with higher pageviews per session lead to a higher conversion rate vs when a product with a lower ratio?
Does an increase in sessions correlate to improvement in sales?
How has your session to pageview ratio changed over time?
Correlating Sessions and Page Views to Sales Metrics
Understanding how page views and sessions relate to your sales performance is critical for evaluating the health of your Amazon business. Many sellers overlook the fact that both of these metrics must work in tandem to tell a full story.
Sessions are typically used to calculate conversion rates. For example, if you generate one sale from every 20 sessions, that gives you a 5% conversion rate. So if the gap between your page views vs sessions is very large, then this may indicate that information on your listings may be missing that shoppers need to make a purchase decision. Compare the content vs that of other competing listings and close potentially existing content gaps by adding missing information to your bullet-point copy.
Another possible explanation is that the audience you reach is too small. If your page views are high, but sessions remain low, you may be receiving visits from repeat customers. While this is not intrinsically bad (especially if your products are suitable for repeat purchases), you may want to consider broadening your audience to reach new potential customers.If you need help with this, explore our Amazon PPC Services.
Is Pageview or Session more important?
When I look at Amazon business reports (More on Amazon advertising reports), I pay attention to both of these measures. They complement one other and assist to give a full story about your business.
You want to know how well your consumers are connecting with your product listings just as much as you want to know how many individual customers are visiting your business. For this, you’ll need data from both sessions and page views.
It also depends on your current objectives. If you want topline growth, look to concentrate on the sessions metrics. On the other hand, if your objective is to improve conversion rates, you might want to see an uptick on pageview per session.
Troubleshooting a Decline in Page Views
If you notice a decline in page views, it’s a sign that fewer customers are visiting your product listings, which can hurt overall sales. Note: if you have recently started investing more in new customer acquisition, then don’t be fretted. In this case the explanation may just be that the share of returning customers who are already familiar with your products is decreasing.
New customers who are exposed to your listings for the first time will often have lower engagement rates and hence especially the ratio of pageviews to sessions may drop.
However, with all things being equal, if you have not recently made any other significant changes, you need to deep-dive this issue:
Review your product titles, bullet-points and descriptions: Do they include high-volume, relevant keywords? Re-do your keyword research to check if a change in user behavior has impacted your listings. Listings that lack proper keyword optimization may fail to appear in relevant searches, thus reducing visibility (If you are not sure about how to do this, enquire about our Amazon SEO services and Amazon Listing Optimization Services).
Check the quality of your product images: Are you using high-quality infographic style images that comply with Amazon’s guidelines while also highlighting important product features?
Review your product’s Buy Box performance: Do you “own” your Buy Box or have other Sellers taken your listing over? A low Buy Box percentage could mean that your product is less visible, leading to fewer page views.
Conclusion
Hope this article clears the air on the difference between pageviews and sessions. I know there are just loads of data on Amazon and can be overwhelming for even the most seasoned sellers. Successful Amazon sellers will always test and then monitor their data. Sessions, and pageviews are 2 key metrics sellers should monitor to see if their tactics are on the right track and keep them trending upwards. If you found this post interesting you may also like our blog posts on Amazon KPD Earnings, What is a good CTR on Amazon or take a look at our complete Amazon abbreviations list.
