When reviewing websites that I work with, it seems the only thing I’m asked about is conversion rates. How many people have done what we want them to?
How many people purchased on the website today? How many new leads have been generated via forms on the website? These are all valid questions but they shouldn’t be the only focus of your website.
Conversions are important when reviewing any website but it’s not the only thing that matters. Conversions are a good performance indicator and it’s an easy metric to understand. It helps people understand, or at least think they understand, something as complex as the drivers bringing people to your website or the drivers making those visitors take action. However, conversions don’t really give you the entire picture.
The Problem With Conversion Rates
Most will define a conversion as somebody completing a form, subscribing to something or purchasing a product. Unfortunately, only a small percentage of your website traffic is their to do what you want. On average, the conversion rate of a website is between 2 and 3% (although some think that this is a myth). By focusing only on conversion rate, you are focusing on a very small percentage of your visitors.
More importantly, conversion rate is a metric that doesn’t tell you much. It doesn’t tell you why that 3% of traffic converted, just that they did. If you’re focusing only on conversion rate, you are trying to force the majority of your visitors to do something that they probably don’t want to do and you’re doing it without knowing why they’re visiting your site.
By focusing solely on conversion rate your missing some very important customer segments. For example, your existing customers: How is your website serving customers who are looking for technical support? Are you measuring this? How is this evaluated and is it included in your definition of conversion rate?
Another very important segment you are missing are those visiting your site only to research your product or company. They don’t intend to buy right now, or maybe ever, but they’re important nonetheless. Investing in improving resources on your website for this segment will ultimately increase traffic and likely increase the number leads or visitors purchasing from your site. If you become a resource, very soon you’ll be winning customers who might have purchased from a competitor.
There are many more segments and they vary based on your website, but you should consider all of the segments your site is addressing and question how each of these segments are being served by your website. By focusing on conversion rate, you are likely failing to address the needs of these segments.
So What Should You Focus On?
Ask yourself, who is visiting my website and why? Maybe ask visitors to anonymously answer why they’re visiting your site, how they found your site and whether or not they were able to find what they were looking for using web survey tools like Constant Contact or Vertical Response.
Personally, I’m not a fan of web surveys. These questions can usually be answered by your web analytics. If you’re using Google analytics, here’s how:
- Start with your keywords and internal site search to determine why customers are visiting each your site. List relevant keywords and site search terms.
- Group these keywords and search terms according to the purpose for visiting your site. For example, “customer service” or “product research.”
- Next, create an advanced segment for each visitor purpose group. On
your dashboard, in the upper right corner of the page, select “Advanced Segment,” then “Create a new Advanced Segment.” - Name your advanced segment according to the visitor purpose. E.g., “customer support.”
- Use the “keyword” or “search term” dimension and select all keywords or search terms in this group.
- Save the Advanced Segment.
- Next, review the Top Content and Top Landing Page reports in the content folder and apply the new advanced segment to the report. To apply the Advanced Segment, select from the “Advanced Segments” drop down in the upper right hand corner.
- For each of these Advanced Segments, review the average time on site, bounce rate and pages per visit for these visitors. If customers who found your site for customer support purposes all see landing pages that have high bounce rates and low time on site, you can assume you’re not addressing the needs of this segment.
Using this approach, you should be able to answer the what, why and how for each customer segment visiting your website. This analysis will help you identify the customer segments your should focus on and if you improve the experience of these segments, I guarantee that web orders, leads or whatever you consider a conversion will increase.
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