Convert them today, retain them tomorrow

In the world of online marketing, we thought it was about time to discuss some key metrics, as metrics are the tools we should be using to refine and drive your marketing process.

We discussed in our last post the importance of strategic marketing, and how the knowledge of technology alone doesn’t cut it. This is our short list of metrics we believe “keep it strategic.”

Conversions

A conversion is simply a way of measuring that your marketing efforts are effective. Conversion code is placed at the bottom of the page you want a user to see, and you can track them from the source activity to the action you wanted them to take on the site. For example, if you wanted someone to sign up for a newsletter, you’d put the code on the “thank you for submitting your info” page, so you can differ from people who actually signed up, versus people who just viewed the sign up page. It is absolutely essential to track conversions. Why? It’s the way to track your marketing ROI. You can see what your best performing activities are, shift budget to better performing activities, and realize potential.

I also spoke briefly about conversions in one of my recent posts: Strategic Marketing: It’s Not Just Making it Look Pretty!. However, I want to offer some examples of how you can create conversions on your website.

• Visit to a key page on your website: In this conversion type, you want to drive a visitor to go to a key page. Maybe this page contains information about a product and you are hoping to provide information on a regular basis, so that, the user comes back to your site to take action again and again and eventually bookmarks your page/site.
• Event registration: This type of conversion requires a visitor to sign up for an event. Keep in mind, an event can be an online event such as a webinar. Regardless of what the event is you still require registration information from the registrant. This builds your in-house database which you can repurpose for other marketing efforts such as direct mail and email marketing. Additionally, you’re gaining valuable insight into the interests of your site visitors/prospectes. Those that attend the event can further be marketed to with the potential of a sales conversion being much higher as they’ve already showed extensive interest.
• Completion of an online form: This is probably the most popular type of conversion. You’ll see examples of this as “contact us’ form, forms required to download white papers, brochures, request more information/quotes, etc. Again, the visitor willingly provides information which helps build your in-house database.
• Online purchase: If you’re selling products directly from your website, this conversion is the holy grail! A good understanding of how the user gets to the purchase page, why they got there, and how we can get them back there again is essential. Also, thinking about up-sell opportunities is very important at this stage. You can gauge all of this through conversion tracking.

When designing (or redesigning) your website, think about the actions you want your visitors to take and funnel them to take those actions. Implement tracking analytics and studying your website’s performance as told by your visitor’s actions and movement around your site. Adjust and refine to increase conversions.

Going forward, make a conscious effort to understand:

• What you want your website visitors to do (Convert!)
• Make it appealing and easy for a visitor to convert
• Track, adjust and refine!

In our next post, we’ll discuss the idea of website traffic – understanding where it comes from, how we understand it, and how we can use it to our benefit.

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