The mystery of website conversions

Often times our clients have approached us with a common problem – my phone isn’t ringing / no one is filling out the quote form / no one is buying my product. They tell us how they recently invested money in web designing, they are running Google ads, Yellow Page ads and local newspaper ads but nothing seems to be drawing any new clients. And every time we dive deep into their data we find that the problem lies either with traffic quality or inappropriate landing pages or both. When you are not bringing relevant traffic, no matter how good your website is, people won’t convert. How do you rectify this problem? How do you find out if your traffic is relevant or not? There are multiple ways so let’s look at the easiest way to determine traffic relevancy for both online and offline sources.

Online traffic: It should be quite easy but because Google now doesn’t provide Organic keyword data directly in your analytics dashboad, it has become somewhat tricky. First things first, sign up for Google webmaster tools which will show you the search query data. It doesn’t give you the entire picture but you will find out how many people come to the site on your branded terms and how many on non-branded terms. See if the non-branded terms make sense. If they don’t then you have not optimized your site well. If you feel the right queries are generating traffic then check to see if your landing page is relevant. If you find an issue with that, you need to rectify your landing page.

For your search ads, traffic relevance should be easily identifiable. Look at the keywords you have selected for your campaigns and check if they are right ones. Often times advertisers bid for extremely broad terms which cost them too much money upfront. For e.g. if you are selling flowers, bidding on a keyword like “flowers” is a folly because you can be appearing for lots of search queries that don’t make sense for your business. You must select your keywords carefully and then test. If you are smart and have selected the right keywords, your focus now should be on different types of ads and their landing pages. Ad messaging can make or break your campaign. Lots to discuss about that in another blog entry.

Offline traffic:  If you are investing in newspaper ads or brochures/fliers sent via mailboxes, you are hoping right people will see your ad and subsequently call you. For mailbox option you can select a certain demographic to an extent but it is not going to be a fool proof system. How can you make sure right people call and visit your website? There’s no simple answer but follow these simple rules:

• People respond to Offers and Reviews. If you have them, flaunt them.
• If you just want them to call your business, make sure phone number is prominent along with your key messaging. Messaging must make it clear that calling is the best to avail the offered deal.
• If you want them to visit your website, give them a short trackable URL. There are many services that can reduce the URL into a short concise URL.
• Make sure the deal you are offering on the flier is available on your landing page.

Lots of other things to look at such as branding, other types of online advertising and Q codes for your offline media. Follow our blogs to stay up to date.