Conversion Rate Optimization

Conversion optimization is not only about the art and psychology of convincing website visitors to convert, it is also about increasing the usability of your site so that the route to conversion is shorter. So there we have it; conversion optimization has two goals:

1. Persuade the visitor to convert
2. Shorten the route/time to conversion point

It seems that every business that has some sort of presence online is always focused on gaining traffic and acquiring visitors. It's strange to think that so many of these same companies pay no attention to how well their website works to achieve the business' goals. Imagine a shopkeeper opened up a supermarket, and spent a sizable budget in construction and getting people to the store. Read more »

There is a common misconception that marketers ALWAYS know the exact answer for how to make your website or business successful. A good marketing team can implement or recommend strategies to improve your marketing campaign based on solid experience and research. However, there is no silver bullet, no clear answer for what works and what doesn’t work, and if anyone tells you otherwise, I suggest you proceed with caution. Read more »

Over the last week, I have been discussing which metrics are critical for analysis, depending upon the type of website. The last two posts covered: Critical Metrics for Lead Generation Sites and Critical Metrics for e-Commerce Sites. Both posts covered analytics you need to be paying attention to if you run an e-commerce or lead generation site, respectively, as well as common metrics for all types of websites.


The analytics you should devote your time to depends on what type of website you have. Here’s a quick classification of a few analytics:

Side Note: Relative importance of site metrics based on site type. Critical goals should be measured and improved. Trend indicators can tell you if your site is headed in the right direction. Good means that it's something to keep your eyes on but it's not a primary indicator. Don't waste your time with Not Important indicators.

The final main type of website is ad-driven, which is a different kind of animal than e-commerce or lead generation. Join me after the jump an intensive breakdown of critical metrics for ad-driven websites as well as some secondary metrics worth tracking. Read more »

Last week I dove into a topic very critical for nearly every website – metrics – in a post entitled: Increasing the Conversion Rate: Critical Metrics for e-Commerce Sites. The post covered analytics you need to be paying attention to if you run an e-commerce site, as well as common metrics for all types of websites.


The analytics you should devote your time to depends on what type of website you have. Here’s a quick classification of a few analytics:

Side Note: Relative importance of site metrics based on site type. Critical goals should be measured and improved. Trend indicators can tell you if your site is headed in the right direction. Good means that it's something to keep your eyes on but it's not a primary indicator. Don't waste your time with Not Important indicators.

Beyond these, there are certain internal numbers you may want to track, especially for a lead-generation site. For example, you may keep a log of web-leads after they go to the sales department. Wouldn't it be great to know if leads from a certain keyword or web site turn into deals more often than other types of leads? Integrating your web site with a good CRM (Customer Relationship Management) suite can show you these types of things. Examples of CRM include SalesForce.com, SugarCRM, and my personal favorite, ZohoCRM, which is free for the first few users.

Join me after the jump for critical metrics common to all sites, as well as an intensive breakdown of critical metrics for lead generation websites. Read more »

The mantra of a great web site team should be 'measure everything'. Understanding what and why you're tracking certain things will help you make sound design improvements to your web site. Not all data is useful, though. The analytics you should be paying attention to will vary by the type of web site that you run. Here's a quick classification of a few analytics:

Side Note: Relative importance of site metrics based on site type. Critical goals should be measured and improved. Trend indicators can tell you if your site is headed in the right direction. Good means that it's something to keep your eyes on but it's not a primary indicator. Don't waste your time with Not Important indicators.

Beyond these, there are certain internal numbers you may want to track, especially for a lead-generation site (which I will cover in a later post). For example, you may keep a log of web-leads after they go to the sales department. Wouldn't it be great to know if leads from a certain keyword or web site turn into deals more often than other types of leads? Integrating your web site with a good CRM (Customer Relationship Management) suite can show you these types of things. Examples of CRM include SalesForce.com, SugarCRM, and my personal favorite, ZohoCRM, which is free for the first few users.

Join me after the jump for critical metrics common to all sites, as well as an intensive breakdown of critical e-commerce website metrics. Read more »