By Derek Ashauer
I have only had 1 client that ever said “I don’t want any more leads from my website.” We all want to build a bigger, stronger business and online is a key place to do so. The starting point of course is having our awesome San Diego web design company custom make a great website for you. As a starting point! “If you build it they will come” is the furthest thing from the truth when it comes to web marketing.
Typical starting points for web marketing
Our San Diego web marketing services run the entire gamut, but most clients first talk to us about SEO (Search Engine Optimization). The goal with SEO is to get your site ranked at the top of the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) on for a keyword phrase like “san diego web design” (which is likely how you found us!). According to Moz, being in the first few results is huge:
- 1st result: 31% of clicks
- 2nd result: 14% of clicks
- 3rd result: 10% of clicks
- 4th result: 7% of clicks
The further down in the SERPs a website goes, the lower number of clicks it will receive. As such, website owners rightfully like to place a lot of importance on getting ranked in the top 3, if not first, for their targeted keyword.
But, SEO is not the end-all-be-all. We’ve helped clients in competitive industries where breaking into that top 3 was going to take a bit of time by providing conversion optimization services.
Conversion Optimization: Maximizing conversions with the traffic you do get
While SEO is important in maximizing the number of people that come to your website, it is equally important to convert as many of those visitors into leads or sales as possible. Where SEO is about quantity, conversion optimization is about quality.
Let’s say you are ranked #3 for your targeted keyword phrase and this results in about 100 people to your site per day. The website in the #1 position, according to the stats above, is getting about 310 people to their site per day. If you have a 5% conversion rate (not too shabby), you got 5 leads that day. If your competitor has a 1% conversion rate (about typical for most sites) they got 3 leads. Your site is actually doing better than theirs in the #3 position!
What does conversion optimization look like?
Testing. It’s all about testing. Nobody can say what will increase your conversion rate until it has been tested. Our experience creating many custom websites for our clients helps guide us to using successful principles, but even then there is no way for us, or anyone, to know if the conversion rate could be higher until we test things.
What can be tested?
Everything. You name it, it can be tested.
- Content. One headline might sound awesome, but another might be what convinces people to dive deeper into the site and ultimately convert.
- Colors. Does an orange button or a green button leading to a contact form get more people to click on it?
- Position. Does a call to action on the top or bottom of the page get more clicks?
- Imagery. Try different photos and see if people relate to one more than another. What seems cheesy to you might actually appeal to your audience.
- Funnels. Do you link directly to your contact form or do you actually send them to some relevant content first, then the contact form?
- Forms. Which questions make people more likely to actually complete the form and click submit?
- Pricing & Shipping. For e-commerce, a slight alteration to a product’s price could have a huge impact. Adjust a product down a $1-2 and magically it starts selling 2x more. Offer free shipping (which costs you $5/order) but suddenly your sales triple easily making up for the extra cost.
Then of course comes the combination of these various ideas such as which text on the colored call to action button at the top of the page convert best? That same text on the same color button at the bottom of the page may have a different conversion rate. By the time users get to the bottom of the page, something else might be more likely to convince them to click.
It’s actually more than just conversion rate
So far the metric I have been discussing is conversion rate – the percentage of people who performed a specific tasks (fill out a form, purchase a product, etc). However, the real metric is revenue. If you have an e-commerce site, you need to test not only what gets someone to ultimately buy but what gets someone to buy more. If you are measuring the number of leads from a web form, a single $100k project is likely better than a handful of $10k projects.
Testing is a never ending process
You could run almost infinite number of tests on your website as there is always something different to test. We can work with you to put together a solid plan on the best places to start testing and how to make sure your site is performing as best as possible. Contact us to see how we can help maximize your conversion rate and revenue with conversion optimization.