Not all marketing is created equal. Putting your words and pictures out in the world doesn’t necessarily equate to more sales or ringing phones. As businesses grow, it’s important to get a little more scientific in marketing than just throwing darts at your audience and hoping something sticks. We’re talking about conversion rate optimization.
Conversion rate optimization starts with understanding your conversion rates. Using little scripts in your website, and technologies like call tracking will get you valuable information. Such as, how many people have come to your website… and out of those people, how many of them actually filled in your contact form, called your phone, or requested a quote. You need to first set your goal, and then set up a measurement system to know how well you’re hitting that goal.
How Conversion Rate Optimization Works
Once you have your conversion rate, which is the percentage of people who follow your call to action out of the total people who visit, you get your benchmark. Let’s say out of 100 visitors, 2 take the next step and fill out your form. Can we get that number up to 3 per 100? Yes, we can. The way to do it is with A/B testing.
A/B testing or conversion testing uses software to alternate versions of a change from one visitor to the next. So if you’ve ever wondered something like whether a red button or a blue button on your page would make people want to buy more… you can find out scientifically by showing 50% of people the red one and 50% of the people the blue one, and measuring the difference in conversion rates between the two.
This concept can be applied to any aspect of your website or even to email newsletter campaigns. The software can send newsletter version 1 to half your audience and newsletter version 2 to the other half and see which creates more clicks. Once you get started, just about anything can be tested and the more tests you conduct, the more you’ll optimize your conversion rates.
Want to find out if your site or email list is a good candidate for conversion rate optimization testing?
