Opinion: Conversion & Website Effectiveness

The challenges ahead in 2006

“The real challenge facing e-commerce websites in 2006 is going to be reducing wasted opportunities!”

The market potential

“In 2006 most companies will wake up to the fact that 50% of their online marketing expenditure is wasted due to poor site design.”

Where are people missing a trick?

“In 2005 we have been assessing the effectiveness of websites at converting clicks into sales or applications across a broad range of companies. What emerges is a pattern of wastage due to the failure of websites to engage visitors the moment that they arrive on a site. This visitor behaviour can be measured with most sophisticated web analytics packages and what you see is a rising number of visits that last for just one page.”

“These visits that last for one page only, referred to as Single Access visits, can often be traced back to visitors responding to Google Adwords or banner campaigns. It is not uncommon to see 80% of visitors who respond to a campaign looking at one page only and leaving the site, and consequently a huge waste of money.”

Views on innovation – what’s around the corner?

“In 2006 I expect to see a huge amount of work undertaken by companies to reduce this incredible waste of money by improving the experience customers have when they arrive on the site.”

“Companies will reduce this wastage by taking four specific actions:

1. Better tracking of their campaigns, looking beyond clicks and conversion to include what happened when the visitor engaged with their website. This will be done by fully implementing web analytics campaign tracking.
2. Better understanding of visitor needs by doing more surveys to understand for example that somebody searching for “mortgage” is at a different point in the decision making process to somebody searching for “cash-back mortgage” and therefore needs to be treated differently.
3. Dedicated landing pages for campaigns will proliferate as it becomes clear that customisation of pages to the needs of the visitor improves results. Expect to see hundreds of landing pages on most sites, so that every key user group has a customised landing page.
4. Page optimisation using proper A/B testing techniques will become the norm as companies strive to improve results. A/B testing pits two versions of a page against each other to see which one reduces Single Access the most and generates the greatest response.”

Trends – what will the market look like this time next year?

“By the end of 2006, those that apply this disciplined approach to improving their online marketing campaign effectiveness will be able to invest even more in their online marketing by reaping the rewards of lower cost per response and greater sales.”

Matthew Tod
CEO, Logan Tod  & Co.