Which Landing Pages Convert: Reading the Landing Page Report

A landing page report lists the pages where visits to your store begin and shows, for each one, how many sessions started there, what share of them ended in an order, and how much revenue followed. The pages to work on first are those with a lot of traffic and a conversion rate well below your store's usual level, because that is where an improvement reaches the most visitors. This guide explains how to read the three columns, why the report needs traffic source beside it, how to rank pages for attention, and how to avoid being misled by small numbers.

What counts as a landing page?

The first page of a session, whatever kind of page it is. A product page is a landing page for the visitor who clicked a shopping ad, a blog post is one for the visitor who came from a search, and the homepage is one for the visitor who typed your name.

This is not a 'most viewed pages' list, which counts every view. The landing page report counts only entrances, so it describes first impressions and what happened next.

What do sessions, conversion and revenue each tell you?

Three different things.

• Sessions show how much of your traffic a page is responsible for. This is the page's reach.
• Conversion rate is the share of sessions starting on the page that ended in an order. It measures how well the page, and the journey from it, matches what those visitors wanted.
• Revenue is the sales from those sessions. It reflects order value as well as the number of orders.

Dividing revenue by sessions gives revenue per session, which combines the last two into one comparable figure. A page with a modest conversion rate and large orders can be worth more per visit than one that converts often at a low order value.

Remember that the order is credited to the entry page, not to the page where the shopper clicked 'buy'.

Why pair landing pages with traffic source?

Because a page's conversion rate depends as much on who arrives as on the page. The same product page will convert very differently for a subscriber clicking an email about that product and for a stranger who tapped an ad while scrolling.

So a low rate has two possible readings: the page is weak, or the traffic is cold. Splitting each landing page by source separates them.

• If the page converts poorly for every source, look at the page.
• If it converts well for email and search and poorly for one paid campaign, look at that campaign's targeting and creative, and at whether the ad promises what the page delivers.

The split only works if your links are labelled consistently. Our practical guide to UTM parameters covers the naming habits that keep sources clean.

Intent matters too. Someone who lands on an article from a search for information is not shopping yet, so judge content pages on whether visitors go on to view a product, not against your product pages.

Which pages should you fix first?

Those where traffic is high and conversion is low. Rank pages by the orders you are missing, not by the worst rate.

Here is an example with made-up figures. Say your store converts 2% of sessions overall.

• Page A has 5,000 sessions a month and converts at 0.8%, giving 40 orders. At the store's 2% it would produce 100. The gap is 60 orders.
• Page B has 200 sessions and converts at 0.5%, giving 1 order. At 2% it would produce 4. The gap is 3 orders.

Page B has the worse rate and Page A has twenty times the opportunity. Start with A. There is no certainty that either page can reach the store average, and the calculation does not promise it; it only shows where an improvement would count most.

What should you check on a weak landing page?

Work from the visitor's first few seconds onwards.

• Does the page match the promise? The headline, image and price should be recognisably the thing the ad, email or search result offered.
• Is the product available? A page that lands visitors on a sold-out variant will convert poorly whatever it looks like.
• Is the next step obvious? On a product page, the price and the add-to-cart button should be easy to find on a phone. On a collection or content page, there should be a clear route to products.
• Does it load quickly on mobile? A slow first page loses visitors before they have seen anything; our Shopify speed optimisation service deals with that.
• Where do the visits end? If visitors move on from the page and are lost further along, the landing page is not the cause. The guide to finding checkout drop-off picks up from there.

How do you avoid being misled by small samples?

By refusing to draw conclusions from pages with few sessions. A page with 40 sessions and 2 orders shows a 5% conversion rate. One order fewer and it shows 2.5%. Nothing about the page changed; the sample is simply too small for the rate to mean much.

Two habits help:

• Set a minimum number of sessions below which you do not rank a page at all.
• Lengthen the date range for quieter pages until the numbers stop jumping.

Keep in mind that session counts in any consent-respecting tool cover only visitors who allowed analytics, so the report is a sample of your traffic to begin with. Compare rates and trends, and take totals from your orders.

If you want entry pages, sources and devices in one place, Marka Metrics includes traffic sources, landing pages and devices on its free plan.

A short checklist

1. Open the landing page report for a period long enough to give steady numbers.
2. Read sessions, conversion rate and revenue together.
3. Split each important page by traffic source.
4. Rank pages by missed orders, not by lowest rate.
5. Check promise, availability, next step and speed on the weakest high-traffic page.
6. Ignore rates built on a few sessions.

Entry pages are one part of understanding where visits succeed and fail, a subject our guide to Shopify analytics beyond the built-in reports takes further. For a merchant dashboard that covers landing pages along with the rest of your traffic reports, have a look at Marka Metrics.