Converting Traffic to Sales
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:
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?
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:
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.
