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The Secret to Converting Web Traffic.
By: Billy Nudgell
Copy is absolutely crucial to not only delivering a great customer experience on
your website but also converting all that traffic. This is true for traffic that
originates from organic search as well as pay per click advertising. In fact,
research has shown that organic search visitors tend to convert at a higher rate
than visitors from search engine advertising. So how do we make the most of our
efforts to attract visitors to our website?
Achieving a good balance
between visitors from organic search and search advertising is important as the
right mix will bring you more traffic. To maximise the opportunity this
presents, I recommend you develop landing pages with "purposeful design". This
is critical to the success of your online business.
When a visitor lands
on your web properties (pages), their subsequent behaviour is determined to a
large extent by what they see and experience within the first few seconds. How
do you know what will work and what will not? Well we need to create different
versions and test. This is where the science of landing page optimisation
begins.
There are two types of tests that I like to apply. One is called
AB Testing and the other multivariate testing. Each has its place in the
optimisation process. Let me explain.
Let’s use an example to explain
each. Let’s assume I have a website that sells products. Should I direct
visitors from my pay per click advertising to a page that contains all the
products in a category or should I direct them to a single product? Which will
convert better? We use AB testing to find out.
AB Testing allows us to
test the conversion rates of 2 different pages. So we might direct an equal
amount of traffic to each of our pages for a period of time and monitor the
conversions rates of each to determine which delivers the better result. Once we
have a winner, we adopt that page for all subsequent visitors. We could do
sequential testing on this page but that’s a topic for another time.
We
can now apply multi variates testing to compare the performance of different
elements of the same page to determine what works best. To do this, we select
different parts of our page, for example the headline, an image and perhaps the
call to action. Then we test each of these with alternative versions.
For example, each time a visitor lands on our website, we can display
one of three images of the product. Once we have had a statistically valid
sample of visitors through the page, we will begin to learn about which image
works best. We can do the same for other elements.
It is important not
to get carried away with the testing. I prefer to test perhaps one or 2 elements
at a time with 2 to 3 versions of each. If you change too many elements, it is
more difficult to assess what really makes the difference.
Once we have
the results of our multi variates test, we adopt our highest performing option
and then, you guessed it - we do it again!
I hope I have been able to
explain how to convert your traffic. As a channel to market, the internet offers
a rich source of information that can be used to fine tune your website. Over
time, you will know what works and what does not. This really places you at a
competitive advantage in a crowded marketplace.
Billy is an internet marketing
specialist and writes on various topics such as landing page
optimisation.
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