As a small business owner, keeping an eye on the bottom line requires analyzing each piece to the puzzle and determining what might need to be adjusted going into the next day, or month, or quarter, or year. Sales numbers are generally a key factor of understanding if things are working or if they are not, but whether sales are busting through the roof, or falling through the floor, understand why is critical.
For companies using online advertising, understanding conversion of those advertisements is the best way to understand if the return on that marketing investment is assisting the company in meeting sales goals, or falling short.
In other words, why run internet ads at all if you aren’t going to try to optimize those conversions to lead to a click-through to a website or product which will then lead to a sale. A few points about conversion to consider (blog.kissmetrics.com, 2012):
• You have 0-8 seconds to make a compelling headline and landing page. After 8 seconds, the majority of visitors leave.
• Approximately 96% of visitors that come to your website are not ready to buy.
• The more landing pages you have, the more leads you are likely to get.
• Product videos can increase purchases of the product by 144%.
• A 1 second delay in your site speed can result in a 7% reduction in conversions.
• Experimental testing (A/B testing; testing users against two different versions to discover which group converts most) is becoming the preferred method that has brought a lot of the companies the most success; only 61% of companies do less than 5 tests per month. Through A/B testing you also learn about the visitors themselves, such as visitor segments which consistently perform better with specific content (blog.hubspot.com, 2012).
There is a conversion factor to get the user to click on the advertisement through to the desired page of the website, and in many cases, this is a home page (such as in awareness campaigns). If you are trying to reach new prospects who may not have heard of your company at all, and intend to convert them into buyers, then the home page needs to have conversion elements within itself. One example of this was discovered by a case study done on Hubspot.
A software company (which apparently wished to remain anonymous), increased traffic to its site every year, but the conversion rate was stuck below 2% (blog.hubspot.com, 2012). This was primarily an issue due the fact that the bounce rate was over 30% higher than the industry average.
A redesign of the website alone increased the conversion by 106%!
Three elements in particular had the most impact to the increase in conversion from the homepage, either to sales leads or to purchase. The company knew that 80% of its visitors were unique visitors, never having visited the page and likely having no understanding of the precise and varied services the company had to offer. Nothing on that home page assisted the visitors in choosing the product best for their needs. The company just said a few things about itself, and expected the user to figure out the rest.
Using a home page headline to state exactly what the company can do for the user, rather than simply a statement of what the company does, was a major factor in the conversion increase. Next, a call-to-action is the path to conversion.
On the new home page design, the company showed an illustration of a prominent whitepaper, with the bright red button next to it to download the whitepaper and learn more about how the company can meet the user’s needs. A secondary call-to-action allows the user to click-through to the website’s product section to immediately begin to breakdown the different products.
Image use is a third primary element. Many companies just throw up stock images for the sake of giving the home page visual effects, color, and design. However, too many images for the sake of having images can clutter the home page, overwhelm the user, and cause them click away before even understanding the how the company can offer value. Instead, only use images relevant to the value and benefits that can be offered to the user, and keep it simple.
Conversion is the center of the website, regardless of what the goal of that conversion might be, so constant testing and assessment of the conversion rates are critical to optimizing the website’s performance and meeting goals.
References: Meher, Jessica. Extreme Homepage Makeover: How to Increase Your Conversion Rate 106%. Hubspot.com, March, 2012. Retrieved from http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/31104/Extreme-Homepage-Makeover-How-to-Increase-Your-Conversion-Rate-106.aspx.
Bulygo, Zach. Work, Sean. What The Highest Converting Websites Do Differently. Kissmetrics.com, 2012. Retrieved from https://blog.kissmetrics.com/what-converting-websites-do/.
No comments:
Post a Comment