Internet Marketing and Digital Strategy Blog
Posts tagged campaigns
Conversion Rate Optimisation
Jan 19th
Buzzword or compelling business requirement. Interesting talking to a European counterpart recently. In Australia we get the traffic to the site first, then use the data to improve the site to increase conversions, in Europe it appeared to be the opposite, fix the site then get the traffic so they convert.
Whichever way you do it, increasing the number of users that convert is often easier than you think just with some common sense and testing. Increasingly clients are wanting to talk about conversion rate optimisation and how they can improve whether it be sales, subscriptions, Likes or something else. Conversion can be different things to different people depending on your business model. Whatever your conversion requirements, start thinking about conversion rate optimisation to improve the ROI from your current website.
Conversion Rate Optimisation and Usability
Conversion Rate Optimisation or CRO does not equal customer experience or usability although the principles in certain areas are aligned. Making my website easier to use does not mean more people will convert. Making it easier to convert and giving compelling reasons to convert will. These objectives can be balanced and both must be considered.
CRO Activities
To start your CRO project think about the following general steps of activities. If the site is yours and small, you may just apply commonsense and test, if you are working in a larger corporate environment as we mostly do, information gathering, testing, prototyping all become more important to support recommendations, implementation and outcomes. Experience is also important. As they say, the problem with common sense is that it is not always that common.
The following process is common when undertaking a CRO engagement. Obviously there is a lot more detail under each area.
- Confirmation of Business rules, objectives and requirements
- If you have experience in CRO and have a poorly optimised site from a CRO perspective, then Quickwins are possible. Fixing some of the obvious stuff, based on experience can help in the short term, but be careful and remember to test….
- Information gathering from feedback, heat tracking, eye tracking, analytics, customer complaints, sales people and more. More information in a future post on supporting CRO tools. Being clear on business objectives helps focus the information gathering in relevant areas.
- Analysis of data gathered and relevance to conversion objectives and available products, offerings and deals etc. Beware of analysis paralysis.
- Recommendations and specifications for content, processes and user paths
- Implementation including A/ B testing (Always test everything)
- Monitor, test and report
If you are going to do CRO, make sure you use a proven methodology and work through the steps rather than a haphazard approach, which can lead to incorrect conclusions.
Getting Results and Common Issues
What gets measured gets done. From the engagements I have been involved with, I have found the following are the general issues organisations have to change or deal with:
- Buy process or forms to be completed, which usually haven’t been looked at for years and are assumed to OK. Watch out that you don’t step on any toes here! Also, sites doing SEO are also usually heavily focussed on spiderable content pages not forms requiring input or forms under forms and this mentality often means these can be ignored.
- The Offer, keeping this simple and clear, outlining the benefits and cost in simple formats users are familiar with and can understand
- Not over engineering common elements. “Search” is “Search”, not “Quick Search” (Is there a more comprehensive search elsewhere?) or “Buy” is “Buy” not “Buy me now” (Is there a buy me later button as well?). Keep it simple stupid…
- Dealing with reasons people will not convert. Are my personal details safe? Are you a real site or will you steal my money? Can I see exactly what it is I am buying?
- Making minor changes, which really in most cases achieve minor results. Think about prioritising based on potential impact.
- Not using the most appropriate tools, mis reading or misunderstanding analysis or the output from the tools with respect to conclusions and recommended changes. Testing can mitigate this risk to an extent.
- Not testing and monitoring changes
- and many more….
Conclusion
If you haven’t considered conversion rate optimisation, you probably should. Start by ensuring you have your analytics package correctly configured to measure conversions, whatever they may be and looking at what your current conversion rates are by traffic type and any feedback you get on your site if available. Conversion rates will vary by type and industry, as well as traffic type, but in most cases can be improved.
Build your own Media
Jan 20th
Most advertising works as follows in larger organisations, right?
- Identify requirements re target market, product etc.
- Develop campaign to meet requirements
- Pitch to client
- Plan media
- Buy media
- Run campaign through proposed media
- Measure success
- Celebrate
- Ad agency wins award
Traditionally, Media = television, radio, magazines, newspapers and more recently banner advertising, paid search maybe given budgets in certain sectors SEO (Search engine optimisation) or social media such as Facebook or Youtube.
Everything is generally measurable for the campaign, everything is short term, switch on and switched off and budget driven. Run the campaign, get the exposure, drive sales. Unfortunately its not always that simple. Social media requires ongoing genuine conversations to be of value, natural search rankings require changes to the website which may need to be planned and take time, taking longer to get results than the campaign itself. So we have some ongoing or longer term solutions interacting with shorter term, campaign driven ideas.
So, why not build your own media instead of buying it? As a large organisations with advertising and marketing budgets why invest all of this into shorter term campaigns? You no doubt have a website with vast information on your products, their benefits and features? Why not extend this and build your own media, including information, tools, communities? In the past many news organisations have morphed into this area, they have a newspaper, add a baby site, dating site, car site etc etc. Guess what, more media for you to buy.
Theoretical case study in point
Theoretical case study and I labour the point, theoretical. Any relationship to actual events, individuals or organisations are purely coincidental. I promise. But consider this. I am say a CEO of a large food company with numerous brands. One of my brands makes breakfast cereals and snack bars for the health conscious professional females aged 25-35 years old, single or married with no children. I know she generally does the household shopping, goes to gym and cares how she looks, feels and takes care of herself.
My website is all about product, how great they are, low GI, good to eat after exercise, handy for snacking and so on. My site ranks well for product names and the brand which delivers some but not a lot of monthly traffic, my last campaign increased traffic to the site but with a lesser increase in sales.
My issue is that I am in a highly competitive market, competitors are doing deals with supermarkets for better shelf space. Supermarkets are 80% of my channel. When customers come in, they are often overwhelmed, time poor and will make a decision based on brand recollection and association or convenience and perception. Great!
Firstly I decide to get rid of focus groups, they are small, not representative of anything in many cases and the results are often influenced by the questions asked and the facilitator. People are naturally polite, especially when being paid and also generally relate to the what is known rather than what could be.
I get detailed keyword research done, understanding what the masses want and are looking for. I realise there are few searches in search engines for my products and some are on brand but that bounce rate is high, unles I have promotions, free give-aways or competitions. Fickle bunch…
Old Media Agencies
Sep 23rd
Bye Bye those upfront buys
Great video on traditional and online advertising written to Bye Bye Miss American pie. If you are in marketing or advertising and pitch against some of the larger more traditional agencies you may relate to this.