Committed to Conversion Results

Every e-commerce and marketing manager knows that the metrics for his jobs are closely connected to the sales department.  Revenue is not the right metric for traffic though. So how do you know that what you are doing is actually working?  Increased sales this week could just be due to your competitor going out of business last week.  Leads and e-commerce checkouts are the most accurate metrics for determining your conversion rate.  For this, divide your unique visitors by the amount of leads or online sales and now you have the right metric. But is there more that can increase your conversion rate?

Generating traffic to your site is important for impacting the amount of conversions positively – but what when you want to increase your revenue per visitor? Conversion optimization can do this. Finding pages that need a fix is not difficult when collecting user data in analytics. Running a user test accomplishes a two-fold task: it helps establishing the line of communication with your website visitors, and it helps you finding opportunities in user behavior. Then add a/b testing (also called split testing) to the mix, and you are well on your way to increase conversion using conversion optimization.

Besides optimizing your website, there is one thing you can do that might have an even bigger impact on conversion, that is: dedication to conversion results.  Who in your organization is responsible for conversion optimization?  At Convert Insights, we noticed that problem ownership is a must for to increase conversions, and studies have proven that you will increase your conversion rate if you make someone directly responsible for the job of conversion optimization.

With all the collected data your conversion can increase. Conversion goals are different for each site: while an e-commerce store is interested in generating sales, a blog-owner may rather be looking to increase page views. Other sites might look for sign-ups, registrations, information requests, or download of audio, video or text files.

The following are some of the key metrics we get when we monitor our visitors’ behavior more closely:

• Sales in proportion to overall visits
• Lead generation
• Key actions taken
• Started baskets
• Bounced vs. unbounced visits

Having someone directly responsible for collecting and implementing user data, as well as incentivizing staff will greatly improve the number of browsers turned in buyers, or other desirable actions taken by your website visitors.  Find case studies on working with staff incentives at Matriz.com, and an article on how to encourage employees to take ownership and responsibility for their choices: BusinessKnowledgeSource.com.

Whichever goal you chose to fit your organization, be sure you work with a conversion optimization model that includes the elements Measure and Learn.  At Convert Insights, our team of conversion optimization experts follows a strict method of conversion increase, and can only recommend you to develop one as well, since a method and a person dedicated to problem ownership are the two most important factors for successful conversion optimization.

How do you stimulate conversion inside your organisation, leave a comment below.

Photo by: Bandita