After quite a hectic week – I finally got around to reading my RSS feeds and I came across a post from Lee Odden on Toprankblog entitled “Are search engine rankings dead?”
In the article he mentions how most people measure their SEO success by their rankings on search engines, and how the focus of top eMarketing companies has moved from rankings to traffic; and now to conversions.
Conversion Optimisation – the method where one would change your copy writing focus from optimising your content for rankings; to converting visitors into clients.
The first thing to keep in mind is - Credibility. Whenever visitors sense that something may not be entirely kosher they leave without any hesitation. This does not only apply to your copy but also to images, ads, and other objects.
The second – Deliver what you promised. If a visitor clicks on a link for purple widgets, then show him purple widgets. Don’t change the focus of your page.
The third lesson – Don’t make me think. If there’s no clear call to action, then don’t be surprised if people leave the page without converting.
Another interesting aspect would be viewing your conversions – graphically. Although there’s no real tool out there to graphically represent your conversions, you could get some helpful numeral representations. But maybe in the near future – we could have something looking like this:
Ok, so it’s a napkin drawing, showing the interlinking of pages; add a few numbers about traffic between the pages, and you have your first graphical report. As for conversions - the darker the colour, the higher the conversion for that page. By analysing the stats in this manner, you can easily pick up which pages need more links, or which pages you need to optimise better.
If you’re interested in learning more about Conversion Optimisation have a squizz at our latest eMarketing 101 Chapter - Conversion Optimisation - Are You Closing the Deal?
Muti
All the traffic in the world will do no good if people don't buy anything.
If you have big traffic but poor sales it generally means one of a few things: your prices are wrong, your products are too boring, site usability.
One site i've seen is an ecommerce site where there's no basket visible. Needless to say the sales are low.
People are more likely to buy from a site that looks the business, rather than one full of spelling mistakes and looks like a fruit salad. If you care about your site then it's likely that you'll care about the customer - more conversions.
Posted by Cybernautix on 2007/06/04