Traffic Versus Conversion Rates

Next Wednesday, our staff will be presenting our first workshop of the year through the Greater Hall Chamber of Commerce. If you are interested in attending, feel free to visit the Chamber Website and sign up. We’ll be discussing 2009 and trends for 2010. I’m going to save most of the details for the workshop and I’m certain we’ll post portions of our presentation on our site after the event but one of the 5 driving trends for 2010 is conversion rates.

One of the major, overarching themes that’s come from our recent recession is the need for companies to do more with what they have. Many companies have really focused on how they can drive more traffic to their existing website or to develop a site that fits their brand/needs that they can drive traffic to.

Now, don’t read into what I’m about to say, but traffic isn’t everything. Of course, you have to drive traffic to a website and the more traffic, the greater likelihood that you can drive new business. BUT, it’s not everything. The real key to interactive marketing is what the user does when they get there. A great SEO or PPC campaign will drive traffic to the site…new advertising online or offline can drive traffic to a site…even a press release…but the fact of the matter is that if a user doesn’t do anything when they get to the site, there really isn’t any point to driving them to the site.

In a Search Engine Watch article by Tim Ash, leading landing page expert, he states that every website will receive Noes, Maybes and Yesses. That is, users that won’t convert to business, users that might convert to business, and users that will do business with you no matter what. The question is how many of those Maybes can you convert to business. That will determine how successful a website is.

Visitors, or those number of “website visits” that you or your agency review frequently, are actually one of those Noes, Maybes and Yesses. Determining what your website needs to do to convert more of the Maybes to customers is what web design is really all about. For more information, feel free to contact us here at Red Clay or attend our upcoming workshop next Wednesday, 3/24/2010.