Once upon a time it was very simple to increase the performance of a website: You’d do some Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), sit back and wait for more visitors who’d then place more orders, make bookings or enquiries. Those days are over and SEO is more of a hygiene factor nowadays. You need to think deeper and work harder to stay ahead of the competition online. But many organisations still run online advertising campaigns as a black hole. They pump in money without measuring their return on investment. To quote one of the founders of modern advertising: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half.” When online advertising is carried out in a well-considered way, you can tell which half of your budget is effective – and keep refining it to make sure all your money is well spent!

So how do you tackle this advertising ‘black hole’?

 Surprisingly, the goal of Online Marketing shouldn’t be getting more visitors onto your website. The goal of a good Online Marketing project should be to get more conversions. Whether you call a conversion the sale of a product or an enquiry generated, they should be measured and used to make improvements to both the website and the how visitors are referred to the website. The first step in increasing conversion rates is actually measuring conversions. This can also be the hardest step to get right. Measurement is easiest for websites selling products and services directly online as these are a clear-cut indicator ie the number and value of sales. However, actual sales for many service oriented companies may occur months down the line. A conversion for these types of companies could be considered the initial enquiry rather than the sale. When conversions are measured within a web analytics system they can be analysed within the context of the whole website performance. Setting up your measurement it can be as simple as adding a few lines of JavaScript onto your order completion pages. For more advanced analysis more detailed conversion information can be included such as: order value / number of products ordered.

Improving performance

 By measuring conversion you ensure that the right visitors are targeted to begin with. Whether you are using organic SEO, a pay per click campaign or a listing on an external site the performance of each individual channel can be analysed in terms of Return on Investment (ROI). This system is used successfully by customers evaluating sponsored listings on multiple paid-for sites, with listings that don’t provide a positive ROI not renewed. Having visibility of conversion rates allows you to start making improvements to your site. In the past, improvements were guided by studying generic best practices. However, generic best practice isn’t necessarily right for your site. For example including additional product images may work wonders for Amazon, but might not for you. So an optimisation test adding images to part of your site lets you implement a change and measure live conversion rates. The result of these A/B test or multivariate test will give a scientifically significant result showing whether an improvement works for you. Using these methods we’ve seen jumps in conversion rates from 5% to 30% and higher. To discuss your requirements with a search specialist, please contact us now.