4 Steps to Optimize your “Product Lists” with Google Analytics

Product list performance report is one of the enhanced e-commerce products provided by Google Analytics. 

It allows you to track the performance of product clusters in your online store. By analyzing customer engagement metrics for product lists, online retailers can better customize product placements and suggest products to maximize click-through rates and conversion rates.

While most sellers recognize the need for an optimized product list, execution is a different story.

Let’s start with what product lists are, and what it means to optimize them.

What are Product Lists?

A product list is simply a way of organizing how products are presented to customers on your website.

In other words, a product list can be a block of promoted products on your homepage, a page with products of a certain category (e.g. men’s shirts), or search results from a customer searching a keyword in your website search bar.

Let’s take the Google Merchandise Store as a simple example. This ecommerce store sells Google-branded products and currently has three main product lists on its website.

The Category product list includes all the product pages sorted by category. For example, you can find products branded with “Youtube” under “Shop by Brand.”

The Search Results product list, on the other hand, includes the products that appeared in search results on the Google Merchandise store (e.g. all the products presented to me if I search “henley”).

Now that you know what product lists are, let’s analyze how they’re performing and optimize them!

4 Steps of Product List Optimization

Product List Optimization simply means optimizing your product lists to maximize product sales (thanks Captain Obvious).

I know what you’re probably thinking: so why do I care about product list performance?

In short, this analysis helps you identify which on-site product arrangements are most effective in getting customers to buy products.

For example, you’re the marketing director for an eCommerce company that sells outdoor camping gear. 

You’re reviewing your weekly Google Analytics reports, and notice that…

The main place to look is in Google Analytics is the Product List Performance report (Conversions > Ecommerce > Product List Performance). 

This eCommerce report lets you analyze which product blocks, category pages, and search results drove the most engagement and conversions for each product.

Specifically, for all your products, you can look at which product lists resulted in the most:

There are 4 steps to analyzing product list performance 

— let’s start with Step 1!

Step 1: Identify and promote the top-performing product lists

By default, this report is sorted by Product List Views. Click on the header of the Product List CTR column to sort product lists by click-through rate. These are the product lists that you want to promote.

Step 2: Promote products that have a relatively high CTR despite having a relatively low product list position.

Compare the click-through rates (CTRs) for different Product List Positions. Positions are the order in which the products are displayed in your product blocks.

First isolate the Product List you’re interested in by typing in its name in the search bar. Then use Product List Position as a secondary dimension.

The top positions tend to have the highest CTR because they’re more visible to users.

If the CTR is scattered, it’s more likely they’re clicking on it because they’re interested in the actual product rather than just clicking the more visible products. 

Put these “MVPs” (most valuable products) at the top of the list. Moving those products to more prominent positions.

Step 3: Check values of Product List Clicks.

Try rotating other products into the Homepage Promo list in place of the worst performing product, to improve performance of this list. Or you can try moving them to a better position if they’re important.

Step 4: Look at how each product performs depending on what list it’s on.

Click All at the top, then change the primary dimension to Product. Sort by Product List Clicks to see what products generate the most activity. Filter the table for the top performing product using the search bar.

Add product list name as a secondary dimension.

Then sort by Product List CTR to see which product list this product performs best.

As you can see, these placements work well.

These reports help you make tactical decisions about the organization and placement of products in product lists. But be mindful of where and when they appear on your site.

Don’t compare the performance of the product list of the homepage to one that’s deep within your site. 

Cross promotions can often be improved by making them more prominent on your web pages. However, when you can’t change the placement (like in search results), you may have to adjust products instead.

Today, we showed you how your ecommerce business can learn how your product lists are performing. More importantly, we walked you through how to reorganize the arrangement of products on your website to maximize product sales.

The true value of the product list performance report lies in its ability to dynamically group products together based on search results or suggested products. This allows you to analyze not only how specific products are performing, but also how they combine with other products.

These insights can also drive smarter spending on marketing activities and maximize sales.