Figure 1-1. Search results page
Armed with the knowledge from the analysis stage, you are finally ready to move to the optimization process. Because conversion optimization is focused on results, we rarely recommend making drastic changes where you lose track of which elements are impacting your audience. This can be one of the biggest challenges in conversion optimization. Many website operators and marketers are deeply frustrated by their low conversion numbers and are eager to find new ways to maximize revenue. As a result, they change hundreds of elements in a single campaign, hoping that these changes will have a positive impact on their bottom line.
We have done conversion optimization long enough to know that although some of the changes will have a positive impact, a few of them will have a negative impact. Many are likely to have little to no impact at all. Making too many changes at once dilutes the impact of such changes, making it difficult to track which elements actually helped—or hurt—your campaign.
Conversion optimization is an iterative process. You start by understanding your market and making assumptions about how your market interacts with your website. You then adjust your marketing and sales processes to test these assumptions and to measure how your market actually responds. Exactly measuring a customer’s response on the Web is far superior to measuring a customer’s response in any other medium—learn all you can from the response. Changes to a marketing campaign that increase revenue are rewarding. But instances where adjustments cause a decrease in revenue present valuable information about your market. Changes to a website or campaign that do not move the needle in any direction should be cause for concern.
Conversion optimization starts when a visitor views a particular ad and clicks to visit your website. A properly designed campaign, site, collection of web pages, and checkout process will give your prospects the information they are looking for and will increase your chances of converting them. However, a poorly developed website can undermine an otherwise successful promotional campaign.
We are used to entering terms into a search engine and receiving results that are relevant to our query. If your website or campaign is displayed on the search engine results pages (SERPs), you have a chance of a consumer clicking on that listing and landing on your website.
Figure 1-1 shows how a SERP is divided into two main sections: organic results and paid results. The organic search results are your first chance to get visitors to your website. Organic search results appear in the order that search engines determine is most relevant to a particular query after crawling millions of pages on the Web. The competition for the coveted first place in organic search results is fierce. The discipline of search engine optimization (SEO) focuses on achieving a higher ranking in the SERPs. Paid results on a search results page are your second chance to get a customer to click through to your website. Although paid advertising is competitive, it is far less complex to appear first as a paid listing compared to the organic listings. In the paid listing section, advertisers pay only when a customer actually clicks on an ad.
Search is only one way to drive customers to your website. Many companies send regular promotions and advertisements to their email lists. Figure 1-2 shows an example of a promotional email we received from Amazon.com offering large discounts on textbooks. The goal of this particular email is to get us to take action: visit the site and place an order.
Banner advertising is another technique you can employ to drive visitors to your website. Although most paid search results rely on a model in which advertisers pay when a user actually clicks on the ad and lands on your website, most banner advertising is sold based on the number of times a banner is displayed. Figure 1-3 shows how metroPCS uses a banner ad to drive visitors to its website.
The techniques for driving traffic to a website are similar to the techniques for driving customers to a retail outlet. Think of the advertising that media retailers use to convince customers to visit their store: yellow page listings, TV commercials, print advertising, radio ads, telemarketing campaigns, snail mail ads, and many other forms. Table 1-1 compares some of the online and offline advertising media. Ultimately, the goal is to convince a potential customer to come to the store and make contact with the retailer.
