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The Importance of Website Conversion
By Scott Buresh (c) 2009 Medium Blue
(http://www.mediumblue.com)

Many companies make the mistake of spending money in areas
where it's not necessary. Take, for example, companies
pumping marketing dollars into increasing traffic on the
website. It's great to get more traffic, but that is just
the first step. Now you need that traffic to do something.

Website Conversion Defined

The percentage of total visitors who come to the website,
follow through after clicking on the company's desired
point of action (POA) and submit information, download a
demo, make a purchase, etc. is the definition of website
conversion. In an e-commerce application, multiple visitors
will add items to their shopping carts, but a smaller
percentage will actually make the purchase. The percentage
of visitors that complete the transaction signifies the
conversion rate for the website. In a lead-generating
application, multiple visitors will follow a path that you
desire for them to follow (at first), but will not complete
the form, download, etc. The percentage that does signifies
the conversion rate.

In order to boost the website conversion rate, companies
need to determine why potential customers drop out at
certain points in the process and eliminate these roadblocks
in order to increase sales. Clearly defined POAs, intuitive
navigation, and simple checkout processes all make it easier
for potential customers to buy, contact, download, or
whatever else it is that you want them to do that will lead
to a sale.

Point of Action

Basically, the POA on your website is what you want visitors
to do initially. Many websites will have more than one POA,
so POAs are further broken down into primary, secondary, and
even tertiary POAs. A primary POA (usually the most
profitable action for a user to take) might be completing a
purchase on the site while a secondary POA might be signing
up for the site's email newsletter announcing weekly
specials. As a general rule, the marketing department (not
the web designers) in consultation with sales should decide
what the primary and secondary POAs will be.

Some websites have no clear POA and mainly serve as
'brochure-ware.' If a website doesn't have clear POAs
that guide users toward taking specific, valuable actions,
those users are of course less likely to become purchasers.

Take Rate

The number (or percentage) of visitors who show interest in
your POA (i.e. click on a link to visit the site's contact
form), comprise your take rate. Say a B2B website is
highlighting its downloadable demo as its POA; a visitor
might click on that link to get to a download page. Whether
or not they actually follow through with the download has no
bearing on the take rate - the take rate merely demonstrates
that there was enough interest for them to take the POA.

On an e-commerce site, for instance, a visitor who adds a
product to his shopping basket has taken the first step
toward the company's desired POA, but the potential
purchaser may not complete the transaction.

There are many ways to improve the take rate of a website.
One of the biggest ways is to simply make it very clear to
visitors, on every page of your site, what you want them to
do. Whether this is to purchase, to contact, to download, to
sign up, or any number of other actions, make it clear and
prominent for the visitor. No matter where they are on your
site when they decide they are ready to take that POA, your
site should make it easy for them to do so.

Website Conversion Rate

The actual website conversion rate is the ratio equal to the
number of people who actually convert on the site versus the
overall number of visitors to the site for a given period.
If, for example, 3 out of every 100 visitors to your B2B
site filled out a contact form (and that form was your only
POA) your website conversion rate would be 3%.

Obviously, improving your take rate will also improve your
conversion rate, since more people will be coming to the
form, download page, purchase page, etc. But there are many
things you can do to increase the likelihood that people
will convert after they have taken the initial POA. Keeping
contact forms short and only asking for the minimal
information you need is one way. Having a prominent and
clear privacy policy or encryption policy can also help. The
important thing to recognize is that a large number of
people who demonstrate an interest in your products or
services by clicking on your POA may not follow thorough,
and it is important to determine why and to remove those
obstacles.

Putting it Together

There are literally thousands of elements you can change on
your website to increase both your take rate and website
conversion rate. A/B testing has long been used to determine
how changing certain variables affects the conversion and
take rates. However, this method is limited to testing one
variable at a time if you want to gather the granular
metrics from each slight modification. Today, with more
sophisticated testing software packages available,
multivariate testing, which enables you to test many
variables at the same time while still seeing granular
results, is becoming more common. Common tests include
changing color schemes, tweaking various aspects of
navigation, copy, and POAs have all been proven to maximize
the take rate, website conversion rate, and subsequently,
your revenue and bottom line. Website conversion is all
about your visitors - appeal to their needs and desires in a
logical, concise way, and you'll see your rates improve.
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Scott Buresh is the CEO of Medium Blue Search Engine Marketing,
which was named the number one organic search engine optimization
company (http://www.mediumblue.com/)in the world in 2006 and 2007
by PromotionWorld. Scott has contributed content to many
publications including The Complete Guide to Google Advertising
(Atlantic, 2008) and Building Your Business with Google For
Dummies (Wiley, 2004), MarketingProfs, ZDNet, WebProNews,
DarwinMag, SiteProNews, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide.
Medium Blue serves local and national clients, including Boston
Scientific, DS Waters, and Wake Forest University Baptist
Medical Center. Visit MediumBlue.com to request a custom SEO
guarantee (http://www.mediumblue.com/seo-guarantee.html) based
on your goals and your data.
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