Continuing with the theme of conversion that we touched on in our previous blog post, this post focuses more on Website Optimization and how to get users to actually find, acknowledge and click on the calls to action that will result in maximum conversion for your site. Seeing as we’re focusing on getting visitors to do exactly what you want, I’m going to get straight to the point here as my objective for this blog post is to get you to

1. What do you want your customers to do again?

This is the VERY FIRST QUESTION you need to answer before going any further to optimize your website. You are creating a website for a purpose. Before you’ve even thought about any layouts or page wireframes or anything of the sort, you need to know exactly what you want from you site. Do you want visitors to buy something, register their details or maybe you just want them to call you? Don’t go any further until you have answered this question.

A large percentage of the online marketing companies out there are able to generate an increase in traffic to your website. The difference between a good online marketing agency and a great one is the ability to assist you in converting you visitors into paying customers. ROI is of course the primary objective when it comes to investing in an online marketing and this should be the joint goal of an online marketing manager and his client.

This (slightly lengthy) blog takes a look at some of the basics of conversion and how it can be monitored and optimized.

The definition of Web Conversion and Conversion rates:

Web Conversion can simply be defined as “converting a new visitor to a customer”. Many websites are generating enormous amounts of traffic through online marketing and do provide a great service, however their visitors are somehow getting lost in the website or quickly losing interest, which results in them leaving the site before taking advantage of what the site has to offer.
Your conversion rate is calculated by simply working out the percentage of your total traffic which converts to customers.

New Google Analytics filters and methods pop up all the time from various sources. Sometimes the simplest of filters or tweaks within your analytics that are all that is needed to help you track your SEM more effectively and streamline your process. So, you have setup a large SEO campaign, traffic increases can be seen and all seems to be well, but are you refining your strategy effectively over time to ultimately show that much needed ROI figure?

Organic Search

Ranking reports are good and well, however, we all know that the SERPS change daily, even hourly and running ranking reports every day is simply a waste of time. If you are using Google Analytics, you are able to track your search phrase rankings (positions) in analytics that result in clicks and the traffic your site receives. This information will help you decide which search phrases and “pages” require additional work as well as fine tune your optimised pages for your “money” phrases.

In the past we’ve had moments where it has been easy for us to contact Google account managers to do the unlinking and linking for us, however we recently had to get this organised while our account manager had gone AWOL.

It’s been ages since I’ve worked on AdWords myself (hands on, besides the training I do), and I’ve spent the last few weeks getting back onto the bicycle and stuck in again. In most cases it is easier to work on a project from the beginning VS coming in at the end and having to figure out what the goal/strategy was for an account setup.

There are a number of reasons for starting a new fresh PPC/AdWords account for clients, such as:

• The number of deleted campaigns/ad groups that still appear in the account become a visual account management nightmare (it would be great if there was some overriding feature that would allow you to remove those deleted campaigns from the account completely, like a recycle bin function… “are you sure you wish to permanently delete these items?”)

This time of the month is always interesting, as our monthly reporting kicks in to evaluate how well we are doing for our clients. Pleased to say that by and large we’ve seen some great traffic growth and reduced cost per visit across the board with SEO once again outstripping PPC nicely. (Always enjoy the internal battle against the PPC department )

Anyway, lets get onto topic, while a lot of the sites we work with are experiencing great traffic growth a lot of them “dont have design budget right now” to aid in increasing conversions. Let me first clarify that we in no way want that design budget, far from it, but in my opinion it is one of the most overlooked areas of a website. Site owners are always obsessed with driving increased number of visitors to a website before adequately understanding what current visitors are doing once they get there. Conversion analysis is key!

I`ve been working on the redesign of our side site for a few weeks now, and one key question needed to be addressed. What type of menu structure works best? Typically, SEO companies will advise site owners to use a CSS drop down menu structure, as it brings the 3rd tier content closer to the home page and thus gives it more relevancy and link juice. But is this the best route for usability and conversion?

Search engine marketing is not short of acronyms that make perfect sense to us, but not necessarily to our prospective partner agencies and clients. From SEM, SEO and PPC to Online PR and ROI; it`s important not to forget that just because we understand what they all are, doesn`t mean our target audience does.

This brings me to the drop down menu. Are we asking visitors to make decisions before they even know what the options are?

Bounce rate: a measurement in Google Analytic’s that indicates the number of your visitors who jump away from your website after they arrive at a page, without going to another page. Definitely one of the most useful metrics webmasters or marketers have in their arsenal. One can merely glance at the bounce rate of a page or an average over a section of pages, to derive some idea of how the page is performing.

The post that is linked to as a reference by the official Google Analytics blog as an adequate explanation is called Bounce rate: sexiest web metric ever? I hope that`s it`s referenced because it is an accurate interpretation of bounce rate, rather than because it`s what Google want us to hear.

After doing everything you can think of to improve the performance of your website, you may still find yourself wondering why it is not achieving its set goals. You`ve made the design user-friendly, you`ve added valuable content, and you`ve invested money and time into marketing it. Yet your Analytics report displays a rather dangerous looking bounce rate, which doesn`t show an inclination to decrease anytime soon.

The definition for Bounce Rate given by Kichus.in is the percentage of web site visitors who exited from the entry pages without going any deeper into the site. The bounce rate is a great measurement of the quality of traffic that is entering the site, and the overall effectiveness of the design, layout and onsite content. It also acts as a tool in PPC for detecting ‘click fraud`, since an unusually high bounce rate (more that 60% or so) is significant enough to raise some alarm.

Google Analytics development began after Google acquired Urchin three years ago. The popularity of which has since soared beyond that of a mere supplementary side-service.

WebProNews reports a study by Pingdom that indicates that 32 percent out of the Alexa global top five hundred performing websites on the internet use Google Analytics to monitor their web stats.

Somewhere along the line, Google worked out that if they offer their powerful analytics reporting software for free, website owners everywhere would grab at the opportunity, subsequently offering up their valuable web statistics to Google to do with whatever they please. An immediate resulting benefit for Google is that many commercial website owners are signing up for AdWords.

The more we common folk become used to the luxurious pampering we receive from the internet giant, the faster into the hands of fate we accelerate. So far, Google has fit the role of a maternal figure, smothering our every need, as we look to them for guidance and favour. It has been a give and take relationship, as they have undoubtedly used this data to their commercial benefit.

I recently upgraded my mobile, finally, after the long 2 year wait we have with mobile contracts in SA. While it has a bigger screen, higher screen resolution, and is 3G compatible, it`s not as feature packed as the models higher in Nokia`s N Series range, but hey, my N73 rocks . Instead of the standard GPRS for internet access on my mobile, 3G presents a faster connection speed, and to my amazement (yes I did know about it, but we need to test/play with things before we realise what they can do), webpages load faster than before. No more waiting to get to the office or home for internet access. I can now browse the internet fairly quickly on my mobile to find what I need at the exact moment I need to, wherever I am. Now, I realise that I`ve been slow to reach this stage in mobile technology, because other mobile users have been enjoying this benefit for quite some time, and it`s made me wonder if we in the SEM industry have taken note of this.