An extra thousand dollars spent on improving the content on your web platform is a smarter move than a temporary boost to your marketing budget, according to Alex Speziali, a Performance Consultant with Google Australia.
“On average marketers spend $92 to acquire traffic and $1 to optimise it,” said Speziali.
“Visitors spend an average of eight seconds before deciding whether or not to remain on a website.”
Speaking at a Google for Entrepreneurs event in Sydney, Speziali explained that increasing conversion rates is an easier and more sustainable way to improve revenue than running a marketing campaign.
“If you’re like the average Aussie website, you might have a conversion rate of 2%. Say you have 10,000 people with gross profit of $50. That gives you a return of $10,000.”
A doubling in your conversion to 4%, would see double the returns: “It’s easier to double your revenue with site testing and optimisation.”
“You could use $20k for one month worth of advertising or you could reap the ongoing benefits of an optimised website.”
Keep these tips in mind when testing content:
- Pick a good test page. Ask yourself ‘what should I be actually testing?’ You need to make sure you’re testing the most important content;
- Start with the end in mind. What is the turning point, or the path that customers need to follow to get to the final destination;
- Make sure there is substantial traffic. Two reasons, you’ll have the greatest impact when you make changes, and you’ll reach your targets sooner;
- Focus on addressing the main barriers. People are either faced with a lack of motivation, friction in getting where you want them to go, or a mix of the two;
- Give people social proof. People want to know that other people have used your site. They want to be able to trust you. Ratings, reviews, or links to social pages are always a good idea;
- Do it fast. You’ve only got between five to eight seconds to convince user to stay on a landing page once they arrive. If your page takes five seconds to load you’re not giving yourself much of a chance. Research shows that every extra second your page takes to load, the rate of conversion drops by 7%.
The benefits to testing your website can be significant. She says Barack Obama’s new media team successfully used testing to optimise the landing page for the 2008 campaign fundraising page. As this blog post on Optimizely explains, the team tried different combinations of four buttons, three images and three videos.
Using analytics information, the team were able to settle on the best combination. A few small changes ended up increasing conversion rates by around 40%. That saw donations increase by $60 million.
Resources to help improve your website
There are some good resources for learning about optimising your website. Speziali lists ABtests.com, Usertesting.com and Whichtestwon.com as some of the most useful. She says the case studies can be helpful for providing ideas.
“So many customers would arrive on your site and they don’t have the motivation to get to the other side.
“You want to increase their motivation, their desire, and persuasion.”