To Reduce (pages)... or not to Reduce?

[lzhao]

Our site has a large Business Directory with millions of pages.  For examples' sake, let's say it's a directory of Restaurants.

Each Restaurant has 4 pages on the site, each tied together through a row of tabs across the top of the page:

Tab 1 -  Basic super 7 info - name, location, contact info

Tab 2 -  Restaurant menu

Tab 3 - Restaurant reviews

Tab 4 - Photos of food

The Tab 1 page generates 95% of our traffic, and 90% of conversions.

The conversion rate on Tab 2 - Tab 4 pages is 6 - 10x greater than Tab 1 conversions.

Total Conversions from search queries on menus, reviews and food are 20% higher than are conversions resulting from searches on restaurant name & info alone.

We're working with a consultant on a redesign, who wants to consolidate the 4 pages into one.

Their advice is to focus on making a better page, featuring all of the content, sacrifice a little organic traffic but make up any losses by improving conversion.

My counterpoint is that we shouldn't scrap the Tab 2-4 pages just because they have lower traffic - we should make the pages BETTER.    The content we display is thin, and we have plenty of data we could expose to make the pages more robust.    By consolidating it will also be hard to optimize a page for people searching for name/location AND menu AND reviews AND photos.  We're asking that one page to do too much, and it's likely we will see diminished search volume for queries on menu, reviews and food.  I think the decline will be much more significant than the consultant estimates.

The consultant says there will be little change to organic traffic. since Tab 1 already generates 95% of traffic.   Through basic math, they're saying the risk is a 5% decline in organic traffic.   Further, they see little chance of queries for menu, reviews, and food declining because most of those queries tend to send people too the home page or Tab 1 page anyway.

Finally, the designer of the new wireframes admitted that potential organic traffic risks were not taken into consideration when they recommended consolidating the pages.

I sincerely appreciate your thoughts and consideration!

Trisha

[AlanMosley]

I am with you, if you can make the pages unique keep them. Dont go backwards when you can go forwards. You have established that the other pages convert better, it may be that they convert to sales better too. I have found long tails search queries, convert better to clicks and sales and are the cream of visits. If they convert to sales better by 10x, then that 5% is making 33% of your sales.

Make sure you demand what you think is best as many so called developers these days will do what easy for them. i have no idea what your circumstances are but many today make sites from ready made CMS solutions or templates, and expect you to fit to their limitations.

Listen to others, but in the end, no one loves your busibness or understands it like yourself

[mgalica]

It certainly seems like you've put much more effort into challenging any lazy assumptions (like a single page will inherently convert better) and I think your logic is sound. From what you describe it sounds like the listing UX is well-segmented according to the distinct types of search intent you know that you field from your visitors, and I'd be wary of trying to "fix" that if the navigability ain't broke. Especially if the single-page amalgamation puts any of your strong search intent content in a non-intuitive spot or, god-forbid, below the fold.