Posts Tagged ‘increase conversions’

Conversion Rate Optimization

September 1st, 2009 by Patrick Hare

If you’re running any kind of enterprise that depends on internet traffic, then you know that conversion rate optimization can be the difference between getting by and getting ahead. Whether your website traffic comes exclusively from search engines or from radio and television ads, websites that are optimized for conversion can turn clicks into sales. Even if you only improve your conversion rate by one half of one percent, you can increase your sales exponentially based on the volume of traffic that comes to your site. In fact, an optimal scenario for conversion rate optimization involves cutting back on your online advertising spend while your sales increase.

Here are a few fast tips for conversion optimization, starting with the most basic.

  1. Look at the site. This may sound unusual, but in many cases executives and online store owners who aren’t aware of how their current websites look. If you plan on pushing a significant volume of traffic toward the site, ask yourself if you would buy a product from the site. Next, try to buy a product or finish a transaction on the site itself, and ask yourself if the process was easy enough for an average person.
  2. Test the site on an average person. Get someone who hasn’t used the site to perform an action, or follow the shopping process up to the checkout section. Watch how they are using the site without offering suggestions on how to find something. Note that if you have to personally point out the required steps to making a transaction, your site may need a redesign.
  3. Copy your competitors. If you know that one or two of your rivals are making a lot of sales online, you may want to emulate the shopping process. (Note that you should never copy site content or trademarked terms.) Ideally, you should have looked at 10 or more of your competitors in the sponsored and natural search engine results, and made notes on what aspects of the site a customer may find appealing. It may feel like cheating, but a window shopper in your field will develop a certain expectation about the look and feel of a site selling your product or service. If your site is significantly different from ones that sell similar wares, you may have a problem.
  4. Land paid traffic on relevant pages. The closer you can match a keyword to a page that matches the search query, the more likely you are to make a conversion. In the world of sponsored traffic, “landing pages” are specific to their search terms, and some of the top ecommerce sites have multiple landing pages designed to closely match the end user’s search query. Even if you don’t want to create new pages, dropping PPC on more relevant site pages can result in improved sales.
  5. Learn about conversion enhancers. There are a lot of landing page optimization tricks for getting better results. Many different factors go into improved conversions, from clear calls to action, to trust indicators, to reduced friction in the buying process. Sometimes a single change can double a conversion rate, but usually it takes a lot of little changes to make your site work the way you want it to. There are even sites like MarketingExperiments.com which have case studies related to various conversion enhancement techniques.
  6. Fix your Pay-Per-Click advertising. In some cases, a website is already adequate for conversion optimization, but the traffic being sent to the site is no good. If you’re managing PPC in-house, it always pays to get a second opinion, either from a consultant or an outside agency. If you pay an agency to manage your online marketing, ask to see the list of keywords and average conversion rate for each keyword. While there are a lot of factors in pay-per-click marketing, the average conversion rate should be at least 2.5% on a search-matching campaign.

One of the best ways to instill the need for higher conversions is to impress the cost of web traffic on your employees and outside agencies. Depending on the size of your operation, you may be spending a few thousand dollars a month or several million, whether this money goes to online sources or traditional media. If you can identify the value of a single customer, you can quickly calculate the potential ROI improvement that comes from optimizing your conversion rate. In some cases, a new customer or lead may only be worth a few dollars, but there are some companies (particularly those with longer sales cycles) that can make millions of dollars of a single client. In a high value case, a cost per conversion of ten thousand dollars may be a bargain, but most online stores would like to keep their CPA below a certain percentage (like 15%) of an actual sale.

Finally, it cannot be stressed enough that conversion rate optimization is a never ending process. Testing and improvement should be continuous, since your online rivals will be periodically updating their own sites, adding new features, and keeping up with general trends in ecommerce and site design. At Web.com Search Agency, we have taken on new clients who previously had a great conversion rate, but lost market share over time because they did not keep up with advanced conversion practices. Having a fresh, easy to follow site that presents limited obstacles in the sales process is a fantastic way to increase sales, even if the amount of traffic to your site stays the same or goes down.

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Web Page Conversion Optimization and My “Phone Book” Rule

May 29th, 2009 by Patrick Hare

Before I get to my “phone book” rule, I want to share some ideas about how customers view the web pages they land on. When it comes to customer conversion optimization, here are a few guiding principles that every webmaster should keep in mind when designing a website, or updating it:

  1. Every Page is a Selling Page. Even Contact and “About Us” pages.
  2. If someone comes to your site by way of a search engine, they have a pretty good idea about what they’re looking for.
  3. You can’t be too obvious when telling your customers what you want them to do.
  4. Too many bright colors can be confusing.
  5. Any “auto play” animation or video that is not part of the call to action will distract the viewer. The same goes for sounds and music.

So what is my “phone book” rule? Simply stated, it says that you shouldn’t leave out any information on a web page if you would normally put it in a phone book ad. First and foremost, this means placing your phone number on every page, assuming you want people to call you. If you’re selling anything online, you will be surprised at the number of people who are afraid to complete an order through a secure shopping cart, but not afraid to give a credit card number to a complete stranger over the phone. Secondarily, there are people who will not complete their transactions until they talk to a live person.

Continuing with the phone book rule, you should have a brief, compelling message about your services. You should indicate what credit cards you accept, and you should use the BBB logo if you are a member. If you have any accreditations, endorsements, association memberships, awards, or endorsements you can legally use in an ad, you should consider adding them to the website unless you have so many that they become obtrusive.

How does the phone book rule integrate with the principles of conversion optimization?

  • Search Engines will land customers on whatever page of your site is most relevant to the original search query. Therefore, since every page is a selling page, the customer will get the message. If you know anything about “bounce rates” (the ratio of visitors who leave your site after landing on only one page) then you are aware of the need to communicate before your potential customers click the “back” button.
  • Customers have something in mind when they get to your site. The messaging “above the fold” on the page should reinforce the search query, and explain the product/service in more depth as the page goes down. If you’re buying paid traffic that isn’t getting results, we have PPC Management services that can help you find out why.
  • The call to action should be remarkably clear. If you want people to fill out a form, put the form in the middle of the page, and make sure it is the most obvious piece of visual real estate. To see this principle in operation, take a look at eSurance.com. Better phone book ads take advantage of this principle by making the phone number the most prominent item in the ad.
  • Bright colors attract the human eye. Yellow on black seems to work better than red. Green and orange also draw attention. If all these colors are on the same page, the reader suddenly doesn’t know what to do. Until a few years ago, the only other color you could get in a phone book ad was red, and it cost more because it worked wonders.
  • Granted, there are no animations in the phone book. It doesn’t need them. Video and animation can work very well for conversion optimization when they include a call to action and are the focal point on a page. If not, the human eye focus on any animation that is automatically executed (doesn’t require a click to begin) and your message could be missed. When it comes to sound, you should remember that quite a few people surreptitiously shop online while at work and they will click away from your site if it suddenly becomes audible.

My “phone book” rule almost always comes to mind when I speak with prospective customers. Almost all of our clients come to us with a website that has been active for some time but has not gained much traction. Several prospects have good traffic but aren’t making sales. In most of these cases we can jump-start the process with a simple addition of a phone number to every page. After that, the conversion optimization process can really begin.

Every website is different, and every customer niche has its own pattern of behavior. The advantage of a website vs. a phone book is that you can change the site’s message frequently until you get the results you want, or use multivariate testing to see what approach gets the most conversions. You can even use customer tracking software to record visitor interactions with the site, and follow recorded mouse movements to see what people are looking for. Once you have enough knowledge, you will have a web page that turns visitors into sales, and you might even think about dropping that old ad in the phone book.

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