We recently sat down with a prospect to discuss their online marketing of a teeth whitening product. The company originally only sold directly through retail locations but had been trying to develop an online channel over the last 6 months. They know that improving conversion rates was their top priority.
Prior to the meeting I asked the marketing manager to have the following stats available:
If you think about the important analytics of an online sale, these three are pretty much it in a nutshell. You have to get people to your site and convince them to buy your products, based on their perceived value in exchange.
If you know that your conversion rate is 10% then if you drive 100 more people to your site you should get 10 new sales. “Should” is not exactly a word that implies certainty, though. The only thing 100 more visitors guarantees you is that your traffic metric will increase by 100.
If you increase your conversions by 25% then you’ll increase your profit by 25%. Possibly yes. But was the increase in conversion generated by a great discount, a sale, or what?
Well then there’s only one thing left. Increasing your average sale price is the ticket to financial bliss. Maybe, but what if your average sale price increased not because people bought more, but because you raised prices? In fact because of the higher price sales decreased and reduced revenue.
Hitting a Moving Target
Here’s the problem. The target you are aiming to hit is constantly moving. Even though you might have just hit the bulls eye, relying on the same shot moving forward might lead to missing the entire target.
When engineers plan a rocket launch they first try to understand all the variables that will affect the rocket launch. How far are they from the target? Is the target moving or stationary? You get the point.
Many of these variables change for every launch and the engineers don’t launch until they have secured and processed all the information as there is no room for errors.
In online marketing the process of engaging a prospect through conversion requires various interactions. At each point you have the opportunity to hit the target or, to use a sports term, “Choke”.
The way to overcome “choke points” is by implementing a continuous testing program.
Are you testing your landing pages to see how different headlines, calls to action, form positioning, images etc. affect conversions? If not you may find that the target has moved. You might think you’re hitting the bulls eye when you’ve been leaving money on the table hitting the outer rings.
In our next article we’ll discuss the “Choke Points and see what Seth has to say about Landing Page Optimization.
For more information on how we increase conversion rates call us at 678-951-9506, email us at info at surgelabs.com or complete our FastForm.
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