Marketing Profs

I couldn't agree more with the headline of this article, and it's one I'm afraid I can't take credit for. I found this line in Paco Underhill's book, Why We Buy—The Science of Shopping, and found myself comparing many of the things he has measured in the retail world to the tests I've done with online, visitor-based activity.

The conversion rate on a Web site is easy to measure. Unfortunately, businesses too busy concentrating on their bottom line most often overlook it. The point of this article is to define what a conversion rate is and show you how you can begin to start improving your own Web site's conversion rate, and therefore your bottom line. At the same time, I will relate my observations to Paco's on offline retailing.

No One Can Hear You Shop

According to Paco, the main problem with Web sites is that owing to media attention and the love of technology retailers went online without knowing why.

It's true that in the late '90s businesses were going online because their competition had, or because they feared that they would be left behind by not embracing the new technology. Not great reasons to spend time, money and resources on a Web site.

The painful thing is that since going online most of these Web sites have not changed much for the better. Yes, they look nicer now, but the number of glorified poster sites I still see never ceases to amaze me. To combat this lack of purpose, I propose you look at four goals and adapt them to your own business requirements.

One of these four goals should be the primary focus of your entire Web site design:

1. Prospect acquisition: To deliver qualified leads and prospects through the Web site
   
   
2. Sales/e-commerce: To sell products and services online directly through an e-store
   
   
3. In-house cost saving: To cut costs, usually resources such as printed material or time, by automating in-house processes online, such as timekeeping systems and human resource procedures
   
   
4. Customer service: To improve customer service by providing answers to queries and complaints online automatically where possible

With the goal clearly defined, it is easier to measure the effectiveness of your site because you know what to look for. Conversion is defined in relation to the goal you've chosen.

So measure prospect acquisition as the percentage of visitors who give you their details out of the total number of visitors to your Web site. Measure conversion on sales as the percentage of people buying a product against the total number of Web site visitors.

Conversion on in-house cost saving is simply the number of people using the system as a percentage of the number of people supposed to be using the system. A good internal policy here will mean this is a 100% conversion rate. The number of people using the resources and systems you have put in place as a percentage of total visitors to the support Web pages can give you your customer service conversion.