Conversion Optimization - Increasing Sales/Leads on Your web site

One way to increase leads and sales is to increase traffic. We can do this for you through:

• SEO: Traditional methods, Press Releases, SMO (Social Media Optimization or Web 2.0) methods, viral marketing etc.
• Google AdWords, Yahoo, MSN, and Miva Sponsored links
• Paid Links

However there is an additional, overlooked method--Conversion Optimization. After all, what good is traffic if sales are not at their optimum? Increasing the number of sales on your site from 1% to 2% is equivalent to increasing traffic from 100,000 visitors to 200,000 visitors. Actually it is even better. In many cases, as you increase traffic you have diminishing returns.

Conversion Optimization

Conversions can be defined as signing up for a newsletter, downloading a data sheet, filling out a form or any other activity which is an important first step in making a sale. By optimizing all of these mini conversions we then have more people in the funnel for completing a sale. Keep in mind that many of these sales don't occur on the first visit to the site.

Personas

Conversion rate optimization requires uncovering and describing the personas of the potential clients who visit the web. Once this is done, we will know what information the web site has to present. Let's consider a B2B hi tech site. They might have to address these personas:

• Assistant who first searches on the Internet for possible solutions
• Project manager who has to reduce a short list to 2-3 options
• Purchasing department employee
• CEO if it is major purchase

Each of these, visitors, in turn may have different personality types which influence the way the web site engages them. If we consider 3 personality types for each position we have 12 personas. As you can see, the number of personas, can easily get out of hand.

Fortunately there are methods to reduce their number. For example, there may be emotional, rational and intuitive project managers. However, when choosing an expensive company purchase, the rational part of their personality will dominate even though they have an emotional personality.

Personas and their implementation are important components of many of our Internet marketing success stories.

Removing Obstacles to Conversion

After the personas are established we must remove all obstacles to conversion. We do this by studying each persona and addressing their concerns. One typical concern of a product engineer is the fear of buying a product that won't solve the problem. A link at the appropriate location on the web site to a demo or trial option will help continue the momentum. Each concern for each persona must be addressed at the appropriate time.

An additional consideration is where the person is regarding the buying process. Someone who is searching for "Hotel in Romania" is at the beginning of the process. All features of the hotel need to be presented. However, if someone is searching for "Luxury Bucharest Hotel Centrally Located" then we need to escort this person to a page which shows that our hotel fits the bill. Prominent Contact and Reservation Links are needed to complete the conversion.

Proof by Testing

When optimizing a web site for conversions there are sometimes unresolved issues that come up during the conversion optimization process. In addition it is almost always possible to improve conversion rates even more.

Landing Page Testing

Copywriting, layout and design are just some of the myriad factors affecting your website's conversion rate. Scientific testing combined with our years of experience in creating landing pages can increase sales dramatically.

In one recent test we compared an existing home page with another page that had the same layout. We changed the headline and the copy. After a few weeks we had our answer. The new heading and copy increased conversions by 15%. What was surprising was that the option which included the old heading with the new copy showed an improvement of 38%!

A/B/B Ad testing of message

Ad testing is one of the fastest ways of testing your marketing messages. We typically set up many ad tests to run simultaneously for different ad groups. Ad messages are carefully chosen and special tags are added to each ad to enable efficient testing. After enough people have clicked on your ad to make it statistically significant we analyze the results based on conversions and proxy conversions. Proxy conversions are used because in many cases there are not enough conversions to be statistically valid.

Usability Studies

Sometimes it is not enough to know what people are doing on your site. Knowing why they are acting as they are can often help to increase conversions. When this is true we do a usability study on the site. This involves filming users as they perform predetermined tasks on your site.

Learn more about how our Web Analytics methodology is integrated into our Lead Generating Engine.
Questions? Contact us at 09-8877040

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