June 10, 2009

Converting Visitors to Customers with Conversion Optimization (Part 2)

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This is part 2 of a 2 part series. To read the introduction to this topic, please read Part 1, which can be found here: http://www.idowebmarketing.com/converting-visitors-to-customers-with-conversion-optimization-part-1/

Conversion Optimization – This is a somewhat newer term that hasn’t yet gained the buzz that it will here in the next couple of years. It should be every website’s goal to convert 3% of their visitors to customers. Most websites are nowhere near this amount. In fact, most are even less than 1%. A conversion could be a sale of a product, a quote request, contact form, or just any action you deem has value to your company. Lets do some quick math on how much of an important piece this could be to a company’s bottom line.

Company ABC sells a product for $50. Lets say they get 200 visitors per day to their website. If they’re converting at 1%, they’re looking at making 2 sales which equals $100/day in sales. That is $3,000 a month in sales.

Formula for Conversion Rate @ 1% = 200 x .01 = 2 x $50 = $100 (per day) x 30 (days) = $3000

Now, after a full conversion analysis and applying necessary changes in how your website functions, lets say Company ABC goes from 1% conversion to 2%. This now equates to $200/day in sales. That is $6,000 a month in sales.

Formula for Conversion Rate @ 2% = 200 x .02 = 4 x $50 = $200 (per day) x 30 (days) = $6000

$9,000 a month if that conversion figure hits 3%.

Formula for Conversion Rate @ 3% = 200 x .03 = 4 x $50 = $300 (per day) x 30 (days) = $9000

So just based on this small company improving their conversion rate from 1% to 3% it could mean $6,000 in additional sales. This was money that Company ABC was leaving on the table. They did not have to hire anyone, did not have to create a new product line, did not have to develop a new marketing plan, they just sold more of what they had simply because their website was set up to properly convert visitors to customers.

Nielsen Norman Group provides this type of analysis and has some details that can be found here: http://www.nngroup.com/services/testing.html

You may have noticed they charge anywhere from $22,000 to $40,000 for this assessment. How can they charge so much? Well, they’re customers are the likes of Dell, Adobe, Google, etc. So these high costs can easily be justified with even the slightest statistical improvements. These companies aren’t making just 2 sales a day. If Dell improves their conversion rate and now sells 6 more laptops a day, they’ve more than paid for the conversion cost in one month’s time. You can see why this would be a worthwhile investment.

We knew this went away from our approach of having 100% appeal to all businesses, so we’ve brought this price down to a modest $1,000 and is included in our Bronze packages and above. So now any company can reap the rewards of improved conversion analysis as a catalyst to improving their sales.

Have questions? Be sure and post them in a comment so others can benefit as well!

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Justin McGill is a web marketing professional and runs a successful Small Business SEO Firm. He is the founder and CEO of SEORCHERS (read: [surch-ers]) - a local web marketing firm specializing in organic search engine optimization (SEO) with a focus on converting visitors into clients.

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