Website Conversion Rate: The Elephant in the Room

It is quite refreshing to hear leading online marketers talking about SEO’s contribution to the business bottom line.

Seth Godin, in his post “How to Make Money with SEO”, narrows SEO’s contribution to: Get rankings on a very popular, highly competitive keyword that exposes new visitors to your website Get rankings for your branded search terms that bring traffic using the engines as a primarily navigational device

Rand Fishkin responded quickly “against surface-level analysis of our beloved profession” with There's Way More Than 2 Ways to Make Money with SEO.

I was very intrigued about the fact that the leading online marketers continue to re-hash old and dry arguments while at the same time they were completely ignoring ‘the elephant in the room.’ It’s called website conversion rate.

Rand’s visual explanation of how SEO’s can help you make money is represented by the picture below:

 

In reality this picture looks more like the one below:

SEOs are limiting their engagement only to traffic generation while leaving the responsibility for web page conversion rates to clients. In reality, clients are ill equipped to deal with the conversion issue and as a result, a lot of good traffic is wasted. As a matter of fact, FireClick reports that 98% or general traffic is wasted.

Optimize web pages for increased conversion rates and the business value provided by SEO to clients changes dramatically.

And yet, all the money and effort are still dedicated to generating traffic.

We should not be surprised.  Dancing with the big and slow elephant is not as sexy as planning the next big social marketing gig. The thing is that more and more clients are becoming aware of the issue and demanding conversion rate optimization as a standard part of the SEO service.

We see many SEO vendors smelling money in the conversion rate optimization opportunity. The business case is quite compelling:

• SEO growth is slowing down: no problem, we do not have to sign as many new customers, we can grow by offering conversion rate optimization services to the existing customer base
• SEO prices are declining: no problem, conversion rate optimization premium prices

If you are wondering about where you can learn about conversion rate optimization we can gladly point you to series of posts published at www.maximize-conversion-rate.com.

 

Conversion Rate Optimization 101 - Part II: Multivariate Testing

According to FireClick 97% or more of your hard earned web traffic is wasted. Such poor online marketing performance is not acceptable or sustainable. A solution for this problem can be relatively simple and affordable. This three-part blog post is designed as your hands on guide into the world of Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) and dramatic increases in the online marketing ROI. What is Multivariate Testing? In Internet marketing, a/b or split testing is a process of measuring the performance of a few different versions of a web page to determine which one has the highest conversion rate. Split testing is very useful for determining which page layout performs the best, but it is very limited in its ability to find a version of the page that fully maximizes a conversion rate potential. Multivariate testing, on the other hand, can be viewed as a process of a deep page testing where you are measuring the impact of simultaneous changes of several page components on the overall page conversion rate. The number of possible page combinations that can be created by changing multiple page components can quickly escalate into the thousands and sometimes even into the millions. Testing such a large number of page combinations is a science that requires automation and effective multivariate testing technology. About Multivariate Testing Methods In the not so distant past, multivariate testing solutions were available exclusively to those who had deep pockets, technical resources, and high volume of web traffic. In last year or two the situation has dramatically changed making it possible for companies of any size to use multivariate testing. Multivariate testing technology is still evolving and it is critical to recognize that not all multivariate testing methods are the same. On a high level one can identify three main product categories: Full Factorial Testing Tools The full factorial method is a fancy name for testing of all possible page variations. Since every page variation is tested until statistical reliability is achieved, a large amount of visitors (time) is necessary to complete the test. This type of testing is so slow that for a great majority of websites a multivariate test with more than a dozen page variations can be very impractical. In this product group we recommend use of free Google Website Optimizer. This is a great entry level multivariate testing solution that will give you an insight into the value of split and multivariate testing. Fractional Factorial Testing The more sophisticated (and much more expensive approach) is so called the fractional factorial method. Instead of testing all possible page variations, only an array (i.e. subset) is tested and mathematical modeling is used to predict the overall winner. This method can produce a 10x improvement to the full factorial method but still requires high volume of traffic. - The best known products in this product group include:    Accenture Digital Optimization (formerly Memetrics, Inc.)    Interwoven Optimost    Omniture Offermatica    SiteSpect    Vertster    Widemile Adaptive Multivariate Testing Hiconversion, Inc. has invented a patent pending adaptive multivariate testing methodology that moves performance needle for another factor of 10 in comparison to the fractional factorial method. As a result, it is now possible to run a reasonably sized multivariate test for web pages with only 100-200 visitors per day. How To Select a Tool That Fits Your Needs Although the multivariate testing methodology is a very critical element of any multivariate testing solution, it is not the only criteria that you should use in making a tool selection. The table below summarizes other product features that can impact effectiveness of your test in significant way: Experiment Setup The following are the practical steps that you should follow during the experiment setup. Step 1. Determine If You Need a New Page Design Sometimes your existing landing page is so poorly designed that 'perfuming the pig' will not be the best use of your time and resources. We suggest that you take a critical look at a page you want to test, and conduct a simple 'smoke test'. All you have to do is to verify that all three critical page elements exist and that they are all placed above the fold (see below). If you page is not satisfying these basic requirements we would recommend that you create a new layout. Step 2: Determine Duration of Your Test Different multivariate testing methods will perform at different speeds, but you will still have to create an optimization experiment that can be completed within a reasonable period of time. First, let us help you calculate the total number of page combinations that you may need to create during your multivariate test. The math is very simple, the total number of page combinations is equal to: the consecutive multiplication of the number of variations in section one, the consecutive multiplication of the number of variations in section two, and so on... For example, if you design an experiment with 4 sections and 5 variations each, a total number of page combinations is 5 x 5 x 5 x 5 = 625. When we say 5 variations, we mean control (the existing element) and 4 new variations. Second, based on your current web traffic you have to estimate how long it will take to complete the test. Ideally, we recommend no more than 2-4 weeks of testing. Few multivariate testing tools offer a test duration calculator:  Google Website Optimizer Duration Calculator Hiconversion Test Duration Calculator Just to give you a feel for test duration, let’s use the two calculators from above and apply it to a few typical real world situations As numbers indicate, the bigger the number of test combinations the bigger the difference in test duration between two multivariate testing methodologies. Step 3: Design Sections and Variation Often website owners are paralyzed by a luck of ideas about what elements of the web page they should be testing and how to test them. Let us share with you few resources that will help you jumpstart your experimental design. Marketing framework The most complete method for designing a multivariate test can be described by the Conversion Sequence formula developed by MarketingExperiments.com. Where c = Conversion, the other sequence elements refer to:    m – the match between the offer and visitor Motivation.    v – the clarity of the Value Proposition.    i – Incentives used to counter Friction.    f – the level of Friction in the sales process.    a – Anxiety caused by the process. While Motivation has the highest coefficient in this formula, it also represents an external factor in the marketing cycle that is beyond your control. That makes the clarity of your Value Proposition the most important internal factor. However, many marketers try to improve results by changing page elements like font colors and sizes, button shapes, images, incentives, and so on, when the first step should really be focusing on strengthening their value propositions. Practical Tips There are many tips that you can find yourself on the Internet. Few of our favorites are:     Google Website Optimizer 101 – a quick-start guide to conversion rate optimization 10 Landing Page Optimization Tactics Landing Page Utopia: What you can learn from the world's greatest landing page Pitfalls According to many analysts, the most common errors in testing and analysis include:    Bias: Approaching a test with a clear predisposition toward a particular outcome  Impatience: stopping a test too soon based on early results  Extrapolation: Drawing overreaching conclusions from limited test data  Follow-through: Failing to prepare follow-up tests Step 4: Define Conversion Goals Defining your conversion goals is usually a simple task of identifying the most desirable action that should be taken by the test page visitor. Some tools will allow selection of multiple actions on the same test page. This can be very convenient for landing pages that offer multiple calls for action leading to different pages in the sales funnel. Others will force you into defining conversion goal as tracking of visitors who reach a pre-defined conversion page after visiting the test page. This is quite straightforward but can limit your ability to measure multi-call conversion actions. Step 5: Optimization Enable Your Test Page Enabling your test to participate in the multivariate test is a technical step that can be more or less complicated. For example, if you decide to use Google's Website Optimizer you will need to insert few different types of scripts into your test page and tracking scripts into conversion page, as shown below: The scripts above are test and section specific so each time you decide to make a change in your test, or to run a new test you have to update scripts into your test and conversion pages. This can be a complicated error prone process that fully depends on the availability or IT resources. Hiconversion's transparent enabling method simplifies enabling process by requiring you to insert script into a generic page locations only one time in the life of the web page. After that you can make changes in your test or run a whole different test without any need to touch your web page source code. The third method of optimization enabling is called reverse proxy method. Here you have to deploy a proxy server in front of your existing web server. Although this approach can provide the highest optimization speed, many companies are very reluctant to make changes in the website hosting setup. Running a multivariate test If you are using Google's Website Optimizer or Hiconversion Pro, all you have to do is to start your test by pressing a 'play button'. Taguchi factorial design Some Taguchi based solution will require an addition step of factorial design. Namely, before beginning of the test you will need to identify which subset, called an array, of page combinations will participate in the first wave of testing. To learn more about Taguchi method please visit Jonathan Menendez's blog. For example L8 arrays are used for 7x2 (7 elements and two variations) and L9 for 4x3 (4 elements and 3 variations) MVT. Know when to stop your test One of the pitfalls of multivariate testing is that marketers get excited about results too early. Often they immediately stop the test and apply unreliable winning page combination. For those of you who overwhelmed by statistics, here are few rules of thumb:    25 to 50 conversions are required to be somewhat confident in a given landing page's reported conversion rate (roughly 80% confident) we recommend 50 to 100 conversions which will put you in 80%-95% confidence range 100+ conversions are required to achieve 95% or higher confidence If you desire to learn more about how to calculate statistical confidence of your results, please visit an excellent writup produced by Market.com.

Conversion Rate Optimization 101 - Part I: Getting Started

According to FireClick, 97% or more of your hard earned web traffic is wasted. Until very recently there was not much you could do about it. Now, there are new software products and services that can dramatically increase your online marketing ROI. By reading this three-part blog post you will learn how to harness the  power of conversion rate optimization.

Background

Why CRO?
Converting visitors into customers is the most important but often most neglected aspect of Internet marketing.

Take a look at your own marketing organization and see how much time and money you have dedicated to web traffic generation (organic SEO or paid advertisement) versus web page optimization. No wonder that we had to describe the current state of the online marketing affairs as 'the cart before the horse'.

Statistics provided by FireClick speak for themselves:

Considering tremendous ROI potential one would logically ask why everybody is not using CRO. Well, we can provide at least two good reasons:

- Internet Marketing best practices are still in its formation. Companies still have a lot of
  learning to do and it is logical that the first things were done first. Up to now a focus
  was on creation of quality websites and their promotion.
- CRO is a non-trivial marketing discipline. Before introduction of Google's Website
  Optimizer and our own Hiconversion Pro, conversion rate optimization (often called
  multivariate testing, or Taguchi testing) were available only to a limited number of
  large e-commerce organizations who could cost justify expensive technology
  and associate professional services.

AROI calculation: Lets assume that your current web page conversion rate is 2.7%. If you lift your conversion rate for only 1% you will increase your Internet Marketing ROI for 37%.

Art or Science
Conversion Rate Optimization was introduced first as a new marketing art. The pioneering companies, like FutureNow, have evangelized persuasive copy writing and the best practices in landing page design. In the Internet business this was equivalent to gold digging. The optimization expert will play few ideas hopping that he will strike 'gold'.

We all know that during the gold rush digging gold did not make real money. Instead, the big fortunes (Herst family for example) were made in silver mining. At that time very few people were able to build a silver flotation facility capable of processing large volume of dirt to extract a small percentage of silver. And those small percentages of silver, produced on consistent bases, have created an immense reaches.

Traditional multivariate testing solutions are equivalent of the Internet silver mining facility. By being able to effectively process a large number of page variations and consistently find a small percentage of better performing versions, these tools are turning the art of 'gold digging' into science of 'silver mining'. Similar to the gold rush era, where silver mining was exclusive to 'big boys', the traditional multivariate testing tools are only available to high volume and deep pocket Internet players.

A new emerging trend in CRO is created by new breed of solutions, like Google's Website Optimizer and our own Hiconversion Pro. These tools are removing adoption barriers and bringing benefits of this technology down to masses.

What pages to optimize first?

Before deciding which page to test first, it's best to create a page importance ranking.

Most web pages will be used to receive traffic from multiple sources—such as a combination of banner ads, pay-per-click ads, co-registration, print ads, direct mail, public relations, link building, etc. Some of the web pages are organic, i.e. pages that are part of your website navigation structure and some of them are dedicated landing pages only used in marketing campaigns.

Typically, dedicated landing pages tend to be the most valuable optimization targets. Their traffic usually comes from paid online campaigns. However, do not ignore the organic pages, such as home page or topic/product pages.

Know your traffic and conversion rate stats

Before starting with CRO initiative it is always a good idea to know the basic page statistics. You will be surprised about percentage of who have no idea no idea about real page statistics.

The most acute problem is the conversion rate measurement. Even a large percentage of companies who are versed into using web analytics tools are not correctly tracking their conversion rates. One can blame current generation of analytics products that originated in the counting 'eyeballs' era of the Internet. They will tell you everything about you web traffic but you have to work very hard to figure out the number one metrics of your website: conversion rate.

The good news is that you have of a choice of a lot of free web analytics solutions that are surprisingly sophisticated, and is sufficient for most websites. Let us mention few:

- Google Analytics

- Yahoo! Web Analytics

- Microsoft adCenter Analytics

Recommended Resources
- ROI Revolution is a Google-Authorized Consultancy that offers excellent training and
  consulting services for Google Analytics.
- If you want to become better at web analytics, we recommend you read
  Occam's Razor, the blog of Avinash Kaushik and his book,
  Web Analytics—An Hour A Day.
- If you want to do anything really fancy with web analytics, we would recommend Neil
  Mason at Applied Insights.
- 14 free tools that reveal why people abandon your website
 

Do you homework

In preparation for your optimization test it is a great practice to revisit your key marketing components:

- Who are your visitors? Knowing who is entering the site, who your target market is,
  and if you are really appealing to them is key to a successful landing page.
- How good is your page layout? How visible are key messages and call for actions. If 
  you page has a poor design then optimization may not make sense. Instead you have
  to develop a new layout that complies with basic landing page design practices.
- How good are your headlines? Headlines are one of the first things that pop out to a
  visitor as they land on your page. The headline needs to grab their attention securing
  them for at least another 20 seconds on your page.
- How good is your content? A sticky site is one that will engage your visitor and get
  them to stick around longer raising the chance of conversion. There are several
  different methods that you can use to make your site "stickier", and some include
  persuasive copy, reviews, videos, etc.
- Study your competitors. The objective here is not copy what your competition are
  doing but instead to find your unique voice and unique positioning.

Set proper expectations

We are sure that you have seen advertisements that claim 3x-20x improvements of the conversion rate. While numbers might be truthful they are a pure hype.

Each web page has its unique problems and its realistic potential. Therefore, it is wrong to apply somebody's one time extreme success to your individual case. Even worse, since we are talking about relative results, such extreme numbers may speak more about how horrible web page was, rather then how good job a particular optimization provider has done.

In our experience we have never seen a website where with the right amount of time, energy and resources we couldn't get at least a 30% improvement in conversion, but for less patient ones 10% is a conservative bottom line number.

10% Increase Rule: Determine a monthly dollar value of 10% increase in conversion rate. If that number is higher than $995 (a one time cost of Hiconversion;s Basic Turnkey CRO Service), then your web page is an excellent optimization candidate.

The 10% Increase Rule does not mean that you should not get better than 10% increase. Instead, you should use this rule as your risk management policy. If you are getting a positive ROI after only one month of optimized page use, then ongoing use or any other increase beyond 10% increase are a pure profit.

To give you some benchmarks while avoiding touting our own horn (in general, we are achieving much higher increases) we used numbers reported by an industry leader FutureNow:

- Increased client's overall website conversion rate 10.5%, resulting in $250,000
  additional revenue annually.
- Optimized a checkout page to increase conversion rate by 6.25%, leading to $150,000
  additional revenue annually.
- Increased overall conversion by 27.5% with an A/B test on the product page.
- Doubled the number of sales with a Shop with Confidence assurance test.
- Achieved an 8% lift in sales from redesigned product page.
- Increased overall conversion rate by 51.49% over a 3 month program.
- Redesigned homepage and category pages to increase overall sales by 6%.
- Helped client realize a 108% increase in sign-ups for an e-course.
- Making one change to the flow of a client’s checkout process increased shopping cart
  conversion by 6.5% leading to an estimated increase of $55,000 monthly revenue.
- As a by-product of our conversion recommendations increased organic traffic
  visits by 19.91%.
- Improved conversion on a client site by 24% simply by changing product page layout.
- Increased a client's funnel conversion rate by 24.40%.
- Increased visitor registrations by 12.5% by recommending changes to landing pages
  and the flow of the sign-up form.
- Increased overall website sales conversion rate from 3% to 7%, that is 133%, over a
  quarter long engagement for an online jewelry retailer.

Hiconversion Guarantee: Our turnkey conversion rate optimization service is guaranteed to produce at least 10% increase in conversion rate. If not, we will pro-rate our fees and return a portion to you. If we cannot document any conversion improvement, you pay us nothing.

Should you do it yourself?
Conversion Rate Optimization is a new Internet Marketing discipline. A new breed of optimization solutions are making it easier, but, if you are doing it for the first time this can be quite daunting task.

We are writing this tutorial driven by desire to encourage every online marketers to establish optimization testing as one of his best marketing practices. You should not be afraid of doing it yourself. However, we firmly believe that it is much more effective to get a service provider to jumpstart your program. There are many specialized service providers that can help you with your project, our company included:

- AlexDesigns.com – one of the pioneers of the landing page optimization; pricing
  not disclosed;
- Hiconversion.com – offers flat rate turnkey conversion rate optimization services with
  10% increase in conversion rate guarantee; prices start from $995/test;
- WebsiteOptimization.com – offers a broad range of website optimization services;
  pricing not disclosed;
- SiteTunners.com – offers flat rate turnkey services with 5% increase guarantee; pricing
  not disclosed;
- WiderFunnel.com – one of the Google’s Website Optimizer premier partners; pricing
  not disclosed;
- Conversion Rate Experts – an international conversion rate optimization consultancy;
  pricing not disclosed;

Landing Page Optimization: How to Walk and Chew Gum at the Same Time

While reading the executive summary of the MarketingSherpa Landing Page Handbook (second edition) the following statement caught my attention:

 "Unfortunately, most marketers don't have the time or budget for extensive landing page testing. They have a campaign launching soon, and a landing page is needed pronto! Often, the landing page is the least considered element of the campaign. Marketers who will fuss over ad creative and fret for hours about media buys will ask the design department to fling something up there to land on.

We suspect some marketers truly believe that if their outbound campaign is good enough, the creative will pre-sell prospects on the offer no matter how lame the landing page is. In other words, many marketers think the outbound campaign is doing the heavy lifting, and the landing page exists simply as a passive collection cup for all the sales or leads generated by the campaign.

The exact opposite is generally true."

The good news is that with Hiconversion's adaptive multivariate testing methodology you now can 'walk and chew gum' at the same time.

Launch a new marketing campaign and landing page optimization at the same time

In our recent blog entry titled 'Not all multivariate testing methods are equal' we introduced our patent pending adaptive multivariate testing technology that is revolutionizing the conversion rate optimization business. A lesser understood aspect of our approach is its ability to adopt to live web traffic in real time.

Translated, this means that a need for a better landing page should not delay for a month or two the start of your new marketing campaign. Your campaign and multivariate optimization testing can now start at the same time.

 

During the test, our algorithm will show different page variations, record visitor reactions, and along the way it will start converging toward the best performing version of your landing page.

 

Eliminate risk of testing

With other multivariate testing methods you have to be prepared for a month or two dip in conversion rate. Our adaptive method will go through a very brief initial training before being able to start testing only page variations that are consistently better than control (the page being optimized). This means that our solution will increase your conversion rates even during the test itself.

Hard to believe that it can be this easy? Watch our online demo and then try it yourself for free with our free trial. It only takes a minute to sign up, and you can be creating your own landing page optimization experiment in minutes.

Conversion Rate Optimization Demystified

What a difference a year makes. The following write-up is a follow up to Kevin Gold's blog posting 'Demystifying the Conversion Rate'.

Conversion rate optimization has become more than a buzz word in the online marketing industry. The original "conversion marketing" firms like Future Now, Overture (acquired by Offermatica), Optimost (acquired by Interwoven), and SiteSpect are now joined by a score of new technology and service providers, our company included, and by an '800 pound gorilla' named Google with its free tool called Website Optimizer.

While it is true that most online marketers continue to focus on generating more "traffic", many have realized that improving conversion rates is a key part of the online marketing ROI equation. We still have a long way to go, but things are rapidly changing. 

For those who are still on the fence and not committed on using conversion rate optimization products or services the picture is much clearer today than ever before:

Conversion rate optimization is the fastest way to improve online marketing ROI

Spending your online marketing advertising budget on driving traffic to your website is only a half of the battle. Converting that traffic into useful results is the final element of your online marketing chain that will make or break your online advertising ROI.
 
Your landing pages might look simple but they contain many elements that impact visitor reaction. For example, you might think that your ‘Submit’ button should be in red, or that your CNET product recommendation should be prominently positioned. 
These are only assumptions and the only way to find out what works best is to test as many different ideas as possible.

Our experience indicates that with a relatively modest effort and expense, and within a very short period of time, you could experience a significant increase in conversion rate, i.e. increase in your online marketing ROI.

Little risk – quick time to value

Until recently, conversion rate optimization required months of testing and generated a great deal of uncertainty about a potential dip in conversion rates during the test itself. For the great majority these factors created an unacceptable  business proposition. The devil that they knew was a lesser evil that the devil they did not know.

Not any more. Hiconversion has introduced an adaptive multivariate testing methodology that is able to lift conversion rates even during the test itself. Our self learning method adapts to visitor traffic in real time and after a very brief learning period it starts to consistently test only those page impressions that are better than the control.

This means that you start making money even during the test itself.

Great testing tools

Depending upon your business objectives and volume of traffic you can easily find the testing solution that best fits your needs.

Google's Website Optimizer is a great entry level solution for the smallest volume sites. It is free and provides simple a/b and small multivariate tests.

For large enterprises who desire conversion rate optimization integrated with web analytics or a web content management solution, the choice of Overture or Interwoven will make more sense.

The downside is that both Google and the enterprise class tools are traffic 'hogs'. So, if you are a mid to small organization with normal web traffic then the only tool that can effectively serve your needs is hiconversion.com. Our adaptive methodology requires dramatically less web traffic than any other tool.

Flat-rate service solutions

Similar to other online advertisement functions, like SEO (Search Engine Optimization) or SEM (Search Engine Marketing), conversion rate optimization is now being offered as a total service solution. This approach is ideal for those with limited resources to acquire a new marketing skill

Hiconversion has taken service offerings to the next level by introducing productized service packages that come with flat rate pricing and a performance guarantee. Our goal is to increase the size of the service market and to feed an ecosystem of service provider resellers with  ready to go projects. We desire to create a win-win situation for our customers and our resellers.  Our customers are assured a single point of contact and accountability.  Our resellers get to focus on their conversion rate optimization competencies instead of sales and customer support.

Conclusion

Conversion rate optimization is going mainstream we are seeing a coalescence of market forces that will propel it to every day use by online marketing professionals.