Know-How Exchange : E-Marketing

How are your visitors finding out about your site? What did you do to attract them to the site in the first place? If you know that, you can test different copy and/or different landing path experiences to see what will maximize conversions for you.

It really doesn't matter how long they stay, as long as you can convert more of them to buyers. There's no extra money in your bank account if they stay longer.

It's not so much about tweaking the colors or the wording. You can improve a little bit that way (and it can be tested, but it will take a long time to read results).

The way to really make an impact is to segment your visitors and learn which segments have the highest conversion rate. Then keep testing ways to increase visitors from that segment.

There's a free MarketingProfs seminar on this subject called High-Performance Landing Pages that Boost Your Bottom Line.

You can access it here:
https://www.marketingprofs.com/marketing/online-seminars/226

See if that responds to your question. It should.

If the link to your site in each source is different (i.e., not just your homepage, but a specific landing page for that source only), you'll know how many site visitors are coming from each source based on the page view counts.

And, if you make the copy on each page specific to the source and the copy on the source, you'll find that you get higher conversions.

That's just a start, of course, but it's a good one. Then you can add some A/B testing to get a feel for copy variations, different offers, etc.

Firstly you have an informative and well laid out site (Subtract 1 one today’s visits as that was me!” However the first thing I observed was that there are not many calls so action (Enquire or book on a course) To my mind, many phrases such as “Join today” should be a hyperlink so that they can do just that or if less interested can submit and enquiry form.
I also think that you do not ask enough information from visitors – the form has too few fields and what are you going to do about the comments except read it once and possibly act once in response. Notes are difficult and expensive to analyse in your CRM system, fields are not.
I would guess that many people probably see your prices and even if they think them fair (As I probably do) would then scrutinise the site to see if they can learn enough not to enrol on the course or at least justify the expenditure to your boss or fellow board members. In the days when Lotus 1-2-3 was king my MD sent me on as many £500/day courses as I wanted to go on as he knew that the company would benefit. One day, inevitably he said, “I’ve not shelled out £5,000 on business courses for you so that you can accurately contradict me, it’s to come up with workable models and then work as a team” Best keep-your-job pep talk of the year!
Did I miss something or are you using Google analytics? If you were, for example, and you discovered that your 71% largely left after viewing the prices you have identified a problem. Unless you know, as far as you can realistically impute, what makes them go away, you don’t know what you can do better – if the example above was the case then there are at least 4 responses.
1) Lower prices for quick sign up
2) Explain the prices better and lead the prospect to them rather than being up-front
3) Decide to sell 1:1 as of old on the phone or by correspondence
4) Sell the benefits of a course better.
If 8% spend an hour on the site, is that necessarily a good thing – after all you are not selling visitor hours for the sake of advertisers. You are selling courses.
Are they staying because they want to learn without paying? – If so come up with a strategy to convert them.
Are they staying because they are reading everything to forward to a colleague or a friend? If so make it easier to do this or have you do it.
Are they staying because they are writing everything down? Watch out for a new kid on the block or some very demanding attendees.
I’m a big fan of analysis and data collection as long as you can do something with it and actually do it and as long as the process is seamless and automatic. All the analysis in the world serves you no benefit if it ties you up for yet another day a week filling in yet another spreadsheet!