Seven Answers.

I learned a lot from the discussions with many of you. Here are my proposed answers.

1. What is a valid model for monetizing a web page, regardless of whether monetary transactions are possible?

Yes. There are two conservative paradigms and multiple progressive ones. The most conservative one is to assign a monetary value to the conversion event, and then attribute the monetary value back through the tree using a decay curve. This method would automatically consider abandonment rates and discount those pages accordingly. The other conservative way is to assign a monetary value to each page based on paid media received or valued.

A progressive way is to examine how much content upon each page is copied and shared. A less progressive way is to examine call center deflection, paper deflection, and other cost deflection and assign that cost savings onto FAQ and transactional zones of the site.

A more progressive model, still, would be to incorporate all 4 models into a single unified one. At the risk of overcomplicating the model.

2. What is a valid model for costing a web page?

There are several valid models. The first, most simple, would be to take the entire digital budget and divide it by the number of pages.

The second, more complex, would be to distinguish the difference between working and non-working dollars, assigning the non-working dollars evenly across the entire site, and then assigning the working dollars (special copy, advanced creative, multi-media assets, so on), to only those pages containing the assets.

The first method is the most pragmatic and adequate for perhaps 80% of the websites out there.

There exist other models. Those are the two most communicable ones.

3. What is the relationship between the complexity of a page and the monetary value of a page?

Possible operational definition of complexity: word count, image area, ad count, video count, div count, link count.

Accepting the most progressive, complete monetization model.

Hypothesis: The relationship between the complexity of a page and the monetary value of a page is statistically insignificant.

4. What is the relationship between (hierarchical navigation) buried depth and the monetary value of a page?

Accepting the most progressive, complete monetization model.

Hypothesis: The relationship between the depth of a page and the monetary value of a page is significant, except in the instance of a hierarchical monetary valuation (where you couldn’t answer this question with a straight face!).

This is because the conversion page would always have the highest monetary value. The immediate pages subsequent to it would have higher monetary values still.

5. What is the relationship between indegree connectivity and the monetary value of a page?

Accepting the most progressive, complete monetization model.

Hypothesis: Pages which have a very large number of inbound links are likely to be worth more to a firm than those with few.

Inevitable question: what about search?

Exactly. Search is the final frontier of good design.

6. What is the relationship between an audience segmentation and the monetary value of a page?

Accepting the most progressive, complete monetization model.

Hypothesis: Areas of the website dedicated to customer retention, service, and loyalty are more likely to have higher monetary value than those purely from an acquisition focus.

7. What is the relationship between customer affinity and the monetary value of a page?

Accepting the most progressive, complete monetization model.

Hypothesis: Customer segments with high customer affinity are to be associated with pages that have higher monetary values.

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This discussion wasn’t so much about deriving an universal model, applicable to all websites. It was simply asking for valid models, and under which circumstances would some be worth more than others.

I learned a lot over the past few days listening about it. Many web analysts are frustrated because they understand their firms business model better than most. Understanding how the business model of a firm ties in with the website, and then fully operationalizing it, it would appear, is a pretty tall order.

I’ve only asked, here, that analysts consider segmenting webpages the same way they segment customers, (using money) and then remap those two sets together.

What do you think of the method?