Social Media Blog by Michael Brito
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If you are selling products or services directly from your website, it is imperative to formulate a strategy built around persuading visitors to become customers. Ignoring this simple concept can result in poor conversion rates, lost revenue opportunities and a complete failure in e-commerce effectiveness.
Quick Conversion Statistics
Conversion rates, or the percentage of consumers that actually make a purchase, varies from one website to another. A recent study by Intermarket Online states that the average online consumer conversion rate is 2.7%, and that 62% of merchants have a conversion rate of 2% or less, while 5% have in excess of a 6% conversion rate. A Forrester Research study of 41 online merchants found that conversion rates typically vary from 1% to 4%, with under 2% for 70% of merchants. Amazon and CDNow get 6% to 8% rates.
Online Purchase Decisions
It is true that website traffic is essential, but getting potential customers to [...]
Awareness and consideration are fundamental metrics used to measure the effectiveness of paid search. One of the most common ways to measure these two metrics is to simply monitor the impressions and clicks. Impressions are usually associated with awareness and clicks are associated with consideration. But using this methodology can be deceiving. Assuming that when a particular search campaign generates 100 million impressions, that 100 million eyeballs actually see the ad is misleading. There are, however, tools that can help measure the level of engagement with consumers when they click on the ad and arrive at your website; which I believe tell a much more compelling story of your search campaigns. One tool is called SEM Director. This tool allows marketers to assign values to particular actions on the website. For example, one page view can equal 1 point; signing up for a newsletter can be 2 points, watching a [...]
The question often arises for many marketers whether or not to bid on branded terms, especially if they already rank number one in the natural search results. While this argument may hold some ground on the surface, bidding on brand related terms enables marketers to occupy more search engine real estate and have greater control over the brand messaging.
Trust and credibility are also factors to consider. When a consumer searches for a branded term, and other search results are returned (perhaps retailers or affiliates), a customer can loose trust in that brand; and the company image loses credibility.
In my opinion, brand related terms are the most valuable terms in any search campaign. They are the most likely to attract the highest levels of relevant traffic because consumers are already interested in the company’s value proposition. The result is higher conversion rates and a more positive customer experience.
Okay, I know this [...]
I recently wrote an article about website conversion because after years of online shopping and browsing the internet, I am tired of seeing horrible websites that look as if they were put together by some template builder from Homestead (no offense if you have one); with no thought or strategy on how they were going to convert me (a website visitor) into a profitable customer.
The following points are discussed in my article, Practical Tips for Converting Visitors into Customers:
Persuasive Copy Writing
Know Your Metrics
Improve Your Navigation
Call To Action
Reduce Download Speed
Substance Over Style
Recapture Lost Sales
Content
Technorati Tags: web strategy, online marketing, internet marketing, conversion rates
I just read this article about BTB marketers having a hard time converting sales leads because they are requiring user registration before letting them have access to more content on their site (i.e. articles, white papers, etc.) Not sure how I feel about this; I mean, how else are they going to generate leads? If it’s a white paper or some industry study, perhaps they offer some content for free (maybe a few chapters) and then ask for registration when visitors want full access to the report.
Technorati Tags: online conversion rate sales leads
