What if you clocked up a sale every time someone looked into your shop window? Or visited your website?
That would be cool… I’d like that.
But it’s not reality. Way more people look in a shop window than buy from you.
In website world, a page view is the equivalent of looking in the window.
And I’ve noticed something odd recently. Some businesses are adding ‘page_view’ as a conversion event in their Google Analytics.
Should Page Views Be Conversions?
A conversion event should be an important action taken on your website.
Like buying something.
Or signing up to your email list.
Or asking for a quote.
They can see which marketing channels are driving the most business goals.
You can see which pages might need some work to convert better.
You can see if mobile traffic drives more conversions than desktop.
Plus a whole lot more.
But if you mark ‘page_view’ as a conversion, none of that will work.
Because everyone who sees your website triggers a page view.
Just like everyone who looks in a shop window… looks into the shop window, it doesn’t mean they’re going to buy something, ask you to stay in touch, ask for a quote.
Check Your Conversions
Look at your conversions and check that you don’t have ‘page_view’ marked as one.
To find this click the wheel at the bottom left of your Analytics dashboard and select ‘Conversions’ from the second column.
Here you will see a list of conversions that you are tracking.
Your conversions are ordered alphabetically. Is page_view there?
What To Do If page_view Is A Conversion
From this same menu you can click the blue toggle to switch page_view off as a conversion event. Your data will make much more sense after you do.
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