Lucid Agency» conversion

What's a Good Website Conversion Rate?

Scott — Tue, 05 May 2009 03:18:17 +0000

This week I found myself answering the age old question, “what is a good website conversion rate?”. This is a great question to ask, however there is no concrete answer. The fact of the matter is that a good conversion rate is going to vary depending on critical conversion elements such as 1) what the conversion goal is, 2) how much commitment are you asking the customer/lead to make, 3) how easy is it to convert, 4) what is the conversion call-to-action and a handful of other factors unique to each website.

Over the years i’ve had clients that were thrilled with a 5% conversion rate, and those that couldn’t achieve profitability at anything under 10%. Some of the best campaigns run in the 20-30% range, but again this depends on the conversion objective. It’s much easier to get someone to fill out a form for a discount coupon, than to get someone to buy a $2,000 industrial power washer online. I’ve heard claims of 70% website conversion rates, but have yet to see a website that can convert 2 of 3 people for anything that involves much user input.

Internet Retailer reported on a Neilsen/Netratings study that identified the conversion rates for some leading e-commerce websites. You will notice that the barometer for success varies widely even among this small group. Below is a summary of the findings of the conversion rate study. This data is reported as of February 2008.

Proflowers.com, 14.1%
Coldwater Creek, 13.3%
FTD.com, 13.0%
QVC, 12.8%
Office Depot, 12.4%
eBay, 11.5%
Lands’ End, 11.5%
Tickets.com, 11.2%
1800flowers.com, 10.0%
Amazon, 9.6%

When we sit down with a client to determine their objectives, we focus on the business objective, not just the conversion rate. It’s great to have a high conversion rate, and increasing the rate is always an objective, however the real question should often be, “what is it going to take for this website to be economically viable?” This depends on critical business metrics such as average revenue per sale, the lead-to-sale conversion rate, the lifecycle economic value, customer attrition rate, etc. It’s important to identify all of these elements and then craft a plan to create a unique plan to achieve online success…whether that involves a 3% or 23% conversion rate.

A/B versus Multivariate Testing

Scott — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 17:31:54 +0000

A/B testing is nothing more than performing a test of two elements and measuring the response. It’s called A/B testing because you are likely testing two elements against each other, such as element “A” and element “B” to see which element increases the liklihood of conversion. These elements could be a “50% off” header versus a “Buy 1 get 1 free” header. When performing an A/B test, it’s critical to hold all other elements on the page constant, to enable accurate measurement of the results.

Multivariate Testing, on the other hand, is useful for testing multiple elements on a webpage, for example, to determine the most successful combinations. When setting up and managing a multivariate test, it’s possible to test 3, 4, 5 or even more elements on a page at an assigned or random interval. The benefit of multivariate testing is that it’s possible to determine optimimal combinations, that might take hundreds of A/B tests to arrive at the same result. The negative side is that you need hundreds, if not thousands, of conversions to get an accurate picture of the algorithmic combination that has led to the best result.

In the last week, a friend of mine has been digging into multivariate versus a/b testing. He’s using Google Website Optimizer to setup multivariate testing for his e-commerce website. I like the Google system, since it’s free and provides the basics needed for good A/B or Multivariate testing. SiteSpect and Omniture have good technology as well, but they can’t match Google’s price of Free. Anyway, while he was setting it up I was giving him some advice on different elements to test. On the same day, I happened to notice an A/B test on another website (probably just because it was on my mind). PRweb, which is an online distribution source that we often use for Optimized Press Releases seems to be doing some interesting A/B testing on their registration process. Below are their two versions, let me know what you think:

PRweb-testA

PRweb-testb

8 Principles of Website Conversion

Scott — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 19:42:29 +0000

Often when we sit down to review a new client website marketing, the first thing we encounter is a problem with their website conversion process. I don’t think conversion optimization requires a PHD, but sometimes it does take some critical thinking to figure out what is stopping customers from converting. It can be a lack of a call-to-action, loud colors, painfully long copy or simply no way to convert. When we go through the process of enhancing a clients’ conversion process, it’s almost a thing of magic.

For example, recently we optimized the conversion process for a service company. Before we started their website was converting leads at about 3%, which isn’t terrible. After we finished a basic usability assessment and implemented our recommendations, the same website now converts between 15 and 20 percent.

I read an article the other day that I thought really summarized some of the basic points of conversion optimization nicely. I’ll recap the main ideas here, and if you want to read more, here’s the link to the article, by Dmitry Fadeyev.

1. Subliminal Suggestion
2. Prevent Choice Paralysis
3. Show The Product
4. Let People Try It
5. AIDA – Attention, Interest, Desire and Action
6. Guide attention
7. Always Provide Next Actions
8. The Gutenberg rule (top left to bottom right)