Set Your Goals
Identifying your goals is the first step in improving your website profits.
If you're looking for a better website the first thing you need to do is define 'better'. It sounds obvious but without a clear goal in mind that can be measured it's impossible to deliver improvements.
Start by completing this statement:
For most of our clients the answer is often:
- more online credit card sales
- more sales leads
- more online applications
- more visitors and banner ad impressions
- more membership sign-ups or registrations
- more people downloading our Whitepaper PDF
Does your goal directly impact profits?
It should. If you're going to drive improvements to your website the outcome has to be really important and for most businesses this means it has to directly impact your profits.
The best goals are those that can easily be measured and that senior management think are really important. In most organisations this typically means sales and profits.
What is a 'conversion rate'?
Conversion rate = percentage of visitors that take a desired action.
In plain English, this typically means the percentage of people that buy from you or complete your desired goal.
For most websites the conversion rate is shamefully low - around 2%. This means that for every 1000 people that visit your website you convince just 20 of them to buy or act and somehow manage to annoy, offend, or just repel the other 980!
Why is a conversion rate important?
Double your conversion rate and you can double sales.
Is doubling my conversion rate possible?
Yes, definitely.
If your conversion rate is around the average of between 1% to 2% then you simply need to get 40 out of every 1000 people to buy instead of just 20.
Even if your conversion rate is higher it's still possible to increase performance and sales. We've helped our clients go from a 2% conversion rate to 14%. That's a sevenfold increase in sales.
