Visitor Conversion | Web Design and Web Development

The Importance of Visitor Conversion

January 1, 2007August 26, 2021 by Jason Robinson

In this article, we look at understanding if your site is ready for paid advertising and CPC campaigns. A common tactic to address slow web sales is to pay for advertising on various web networks (Google or Overture being the most pervasive). This, however, may not be the right “first thing” to actually do. To understand why, let’s look at a simple formula that describes web sales:

Traffic to the Site * Visitor Conversion To Customer * Average Order = Web Revenue

What does each part of the formula mean?

“Traffic to the Site” is just what it sounds like: if you have 1000 unique visitors (in web reporting this is known as Unique IP Addresses) coming to your site each month, then you can plug “1000” into that part of the formula. This number is not equitable with “Hits” or “Page Views” as these are not representative of actual people coming to your site, only how many pages are being viewed.

“Visitor Conversion To Customer” means the percentage at which your site converts a new, random, unique visitor into an actual, buying customer. If you have 100 people coming to your site in a month, and only one places an order, your conversion percentage is 1%. Conversion percentages for web sites vary dramatically, with most sites shooting for 0.5% to as high as 5%.

“Average Order” is simply the averaged total (or subtotal) of web orders placed. If a site is selling widgets for $19.95, and the average order is for 2 widgets, then the average order subtotal would be $39.85. So, what does all of this mean? We all learned in math that anything that is multiplied by zero is still zero. Applying this to the above formula shows that increasing web traffic to your site could still lead to a ZERO. If your conversion percentage is 0% (or something lower than 0.5%), paying for traffic into your site is a bad

investment.

What do you do if your conversion percentage is lower than 1%, or you need to get your conversion percentage higher? The short answer is: find out why visitors are not buying. We understand, this is easier said than done. Your best bet in getting started is with customers you already have. Ask them what they liked and disliked about your site. Do not fall into the trap of jumping on the obvious answers or the first answer to come to you. Often times, there are multiple reasons why your conversion percentage is lower than it could

be. The web reports your site generates automatically can also give you insight into why visitors are not buying, but analysis of these reports usually requires an experienced person who knows how to interpret the numbers.

Here is a short list of common issues we see, that once fixed, led to higher conversion percentages:

Hard-to-use or unintuitive web site navigation

Low quality product pictures

Product descriptions meaningless or too short

Splash page for the front page

Heavy use of graphics makes pages download too slow

Shopping experience confusing or too many distractions

All of these can be summarized as: your website does not meet visitor’s expectations. Figure out what their expectations are, change the site to meet their expectations, and watch your website grow!

E-Commerce Ideas

June 23, 2006August 26, 2021 by Jason Robinson

Ideas for E-Commerce Product Sales Sites

Customer Expectations

If you have all of the inventory physically in-stock, designate it as such. Backed up by a garuntee that the item(s) will be in the hands of the shipping carrier within one business day or less, and your visitors a lot about how you run your business. You don’t stock less popular or potentially lower quality product, and only sell what you have. This assures the customer that they will receive their order quickly with no processing delays. To be more specific, if they order early enough one day, they literally could have it the next. I see many online shops take weeks to deliver, but generally they are upfront about, and thus manage expectations.

Some businesses can extend their reach where delivery times are longer by managing expectations at a finer level. NewEgg’s new feature that allows you to be notified when an item is back in-stock could take conversions to a new level for several reasons: another excuse for customer contact; less thinking involved to get back to the shopping cart; and it’s completely automated which means you can acheive 100% exposure.

Using PayPal for addressing an international market: chances are that getting your credit card processing system setup for accepting Visa or MasterCard world-wide is fraught with problems: higher rates and potentially more fraud. Adding PayPal to your site bypasses the fraud through international banks (which can take 60 days to find out about). It can cost more that your regular processor, but the additional revenue and growth make this a good bet. You also offer another way domestic customers can pay as well.

Get product into other sites and indexes

The ultimate use of web logs and metrics: growth.

eCommerce Conversion Checklist

May 20, 2006August 26, 2021 by Jason Robinson

When looking at your current website or considering a plan for a new website, there are many site behaviors, features, or potential visitor actions that effect conversion rates. The following checklist is a summary of features or additions that you should consider. Note that this is beyond the basic list of must-have’s for any shopping system.

Shopping Cart Life Span: How soon does your shopping cart expire for anonymous users? More than a few shopping systems use Session variables for tracking cart items, and expire within hours, especially for users behind prozies that change IP addresses often, thus rendering the current Session invalid (think AOL). Several studies point to the fact that customers will wait as long as 4 days before deciding to buy, and if the item they were looking at is still in their shopping cart, you just saved them several steps and increased the possibility of conversion substantially.

Solid and Flexible Product Navigation: this is a subject that could go on for ever. Our recommendation is that you look at new ways to extend product and site navigation based on current user actions and possibly experiments you run with users. If you don’t currently have a search feature, ask some users whether it would be a substantial gain to have one. Look at different ways to categorize product and build new filters. Then look at how they get used, and make further changes based on those results. You may end of up with something that not only makes it easier for your customers to find the products they are looking for, but a significant differentiation over your competition.

Product Shots: Starting out with great product shots is always nice, but it doesn’t always happen for a variety of reasons. Think about getting or taking better pictures, as well as optimizing old and new pictures for the best display and fastest download. Batch converters get better over time, and you may find that you can keep high quality while reducing file sizes by 50% or more.

Clear & Concise: Make sure your policies regarding Shipping, Returns, Conditions, and Terms are readily available and clear to customers. Make it easy for potential customers to do business with you by providing steps and contact point (phone, email, or online forms) for dealing with different situations (ordering offline, exchanging a products, et al).

Clear & Concise Part 2: Product descriptions can be a wealth of information for your customers about your product. It also has the added benefit of helping you with Search Engine Optimization. New products should not necessarily get all of the copy-writing time. Consider re-working existing product descriptions that are top sellers too. Never skimp here. Hire someone if that is how it will get done.

Advanced Product Configurations: If your products are amenable to add-ons or modifications, consider building specialized forms for those products in the product detail page. This could be a new source of revenue, and will likely increase your per-order averages.

Product matching: in apparel, jewelry, and other specific types of product sales websites, offering a generalized “recommended products” in the lower part of the product detail page is often not enough. Consider setting up specific matches, for example, this pair of earrings goes well with that necklace. Think of it as the editorial content of the site that customers will appreciate, because you have taken the time to not only know your product, but give them direct guidance on what goes with what. If you don’t think this applies to you, think about it and see if there is something similar you can offer for your products, as it yet another way to increase per-order averages.

Conversion Rates & Web Advertising

October 15, 2005August 26, 2021 by Jason Robinson

Introduction

I saw this article, in the news, which is about a company suing Google, Overture, and others over click-fraud. In the article, the company states “Lane’s said ads are often clicked only to generate a bigger bill for advertisers, not by someone truly seeking more information.” One could come to that conclusion when running a web advertising campaign and seeing ZERO results. Another conclusion that could be reached is that the site has such poor conversion capabilities, that the site may never get a real customer. If I were Googe et al., I would seriously consider getting usability and e-Commerce experts to look at the deficiencies in the site and see if the second conclusion is more likely (statistcally speaking).

Wide and Deep

Conversions on the web are never cut-and-dry, just like direct mailer promotions. Even the best turn-key systems need refinement and some experimentation to yeild the best results. Often, defining what really constitutes a conversion can lead to interesting avenues of exploration for increasing conversions, because there is more to go after. Consider that not all visitors to your site are in a buying mood. Would you rather have them just leave the site, or perhaps leave their email address or other contact information? An “add me to your news list” is one way to squeeze more blood from the conversion turnip. There are many other examples of broadening the horizon. A good place to start is looking at competition, and then scanning the various books about e-commerce design to build a list. Prioritize this list against what you understand your visitor””s needs to be. When in doubt, setup a survey!

Usability & Functionality

I was recently drilling down into a product sales web site that was developed by another company, and discovered that the usability was leaving much to be desired. To add insult to injury for the random customer, the shopping cart was broken, and the checkout process what really basic and did not recover well when I went back and forth. We were already working with the owners of the site to give it a total make-over, and I asked for all of the web logs. After running some extensive analysis, the raw unique-to-conversions was 0.02% averaged over six months. Once the site is up and running on an e-commerce engine that actually works, it will be telling to see the difference in conversion rates. More: In MagicLamp Networks Newsletter Volume 4, we looked at how poorly designed sites can make web advertising a bust.

Why Usability Effects The Bottom Line

February 8, 2005August 26, 2021 by Jason Robinson

It is important to understand that the core strategy for most websites can be summarized as a formula, where

Visitors * Conversion Percentage * Order Price = Revenue

This could be translated to sites that are intended to produce leads.

Usability dramatically effects the conversion percentage of a site. Therefore, proper planning and design of the navigation and usage models are important to the bottom line of a website.

Consider the following example:
A designer decides to be “bleeding edge” and put all of the menus for navigation of the web site under a single, unlabled, dot. Visitors come to the site, can’t find anything, and leave. Never make your visitor have to learn how to navigate your website.

Vol 4: Turning Traffic into Dollars

January 1, 2005August 26, 2021 by Jason Robinson

In the previous articles addressing Search Engine Optimization and Web Advertising Campaigns (CPC Campaigns), we discussed overall strategies for bringing traffic to your website and a step-by-step list on how to get your site ready for search engines. In this article, we look at something just as important: understanding if your site is ready for paid advertising and CPC campaigns.

A common tactic to address slow web sales is to pay for advertising on various web networks (Google or Overture being the most pervasive). This, however, may not be the right “first thing” to actually do. To understand why, let’s look at a simple formula that describes web sales:

Traffic to the Site * Visitor Conversion To Customer * Average Order = Web Revenue

What does each part of the formula mean?

“Traffic to the Site” is just what it sounds like: if you have 1000 unique visitors (in web reporting this is known as Unique IP Addresses) coming to your site each month, then you can plug “1000” into that part of the formula. This number is not equitable with “Hits” or “Page Views” as these are not representative of actual people coming to your site, only how many pages are being viewed.

“Visitor Conversion To Customer” means the percentage at which your site converts a new, random, unique visitor into an actual, buying customer. If you have 100 people coming to your site in a month, and only one places an order, your conversion percentage is 1%. Conversion percentages for web sites vary dramatically, with most sites shooting for 2-5%.

“Average Order” is simply the averaged total (or subtotal) of web orders placed. If a site is selling widgets for $19.95, and the average order is for 2 widgets, then the average order subtotal would be $39.85.

So, what does all of this mean? We all learned in math that anything that is multiplied by zero is still zero. Applying this to the above formula shows that increasing web traffic to your site could still lead to a ZERO. If your conversion percentage is 0% (or something lower than 1%), paying for traffic into your site is a bad investment.

When does paying for traffic become worthwhile? This is dependent on your profit margins (or cost of goods), conversion percentage, and average web orders. To illustrate this, let’s start with the above example of selling widgets, with two widgets being sold for each order and assume the profit margin is 50%. That means for every order, $19.95 is profit. We also need a conversion percentage, let’s say 5%. This would mean for every 1000 visitors, 50 people actually buy something from you, for a total profit of $997.00. If the key words and phrases you want to advertise with cost you more than $997 per 1000 visitors, then you need to get the order average OR the conversion percentage up, in order to justify the advertising cost. If the cost of those 1000 visitors is lower than $997, then the potential exists for this to be a lucrative opportunity. Clearly, this is a simple analysis, and each business will have to modify the formula to match their business.

What do you do if your conversion percentage is lower than 1%, or you need to get your conversion percentage higher? The short answer is: find out why visitors are not buying. We understand, this is easier said than done. Your best bet in getting started is with customers you already have. Ask them what they liked and disliked about your site. Do not fall into the trap of jumping on the obvious answers or the first answer to come to you. Often times, there are multiple reasons why your conversion percentage is lower than it could be. The web reports your site generates automatically can also give you insight into why visitors are not buying, but analysis of these reports usually requires an experienced person who knows how to interpret the numbers.

Here is a short list of common issues we see, that once fixed, led to higher conversion percentages:

1. Hard-to-use or unintuitive web site navigation
2. Low quality product pictures
3. Product descriptions meaningless or too short
4. Splash page for the front page
5. Heavy use of graphics makes pages download too slow
6. Shopping experience confusing or too many distractions

All of these can be summarized as: your website does not meet visitor’s expectations. Figure out what their expectations are, change the site to meet their expectations, and watch your website grow!