50 . Glasgow Business August 2015
BIG TALKS Jessica McAndrew, Digital Account Director, The BIG Partnership
Websites – the power of your conversions
So many businesses waste time and money on websites which just tick along – often with no useful business objectives or results. It’s time to stop that...
I
f you have a website, you’re paying for it. And if you are paying for it, you should be geting a solid and measurable return on your investment. Where should you begin?
With conversions. For the purposes of this article, read
“conversions” as being the things your website needs to deliver to justify its existence. And, much like Alice in Wonderland, if you have no clear conversion targets (and the reasons for them) in mind, you’ll never achieve anything: “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought
to go fom here?” “Tat depends a good deal on where you want
to get to,” said the Cat. “I don’t much care where,” said Alice. “Ten it doesn’t mater which way you go,” said
the Cat. “So long as I get SOMEWHERE,” Alice added
as an explanation. “Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if
you only walk long enough.” (Excerpt from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in
Wonderland) Simply put, a website conversion is the
thing you want your customers to do when they visit. Tey encompass a wide spectrum of user actions that can, and do, constitute business results. Which brings me to another point:
conversions are NOT just about sales. Tey are about actions which should be directly connected to a business or marketing objective such as raising profile, gathering customer insight, or, where there is a product to be sold, increasing sales. A client’s specific marketing and business
objectives will dictate what a “conversion” means to them. Anything from product purchases and contact form submissions, to
blog post or YouTube video views can be defined – and tracked – as conversions.
Why is this important?
Because understanding what a website conversion means to your business is the first step to defining and developing a digital marketing strategy to enhance website performance. Once you understand what conversions
your website needs to deliver, you can track them. And once you are tracking them, you gain insight into what is and isn’t working, which ultimately enables you to increase the effectiveness of both your website and marketing methods. Te tricky bit, then, is knowing what to
track and how to interpret this. We start by asking our clients what they’re
trying to achieve with their website. Sometimes, a client will be very clear about what a conversion means to them, and we’ll simply implement tracking and recommendations to help the website achieve this. For one ecommerce client, we more than tripled its sales by using insights gained from tracking conversions to re-develop its website in line with its defined objectives. Other clients are less clear on their
goals and we’ll work with them to define these. Ten we work up a list of recommendations of what needs to be tracked and what content or structure needs to be created to facilitate this. It’s a simple process in skilled hands. But,
like I said before, if you don’t know where you’re going in the first place, you will never get there. So tell me, what are your website conversions like?
”Conversions are NOT just about sales. They are about actions which should be directly connected to a business or marketing objective“
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