Webtrends Optimization

You and your competitor’s all have the same landing pages.  You have a hero shot of the product, a big call to action button and short, punchy copy.  Or maybe you’re already ahead of your competitors and have run a few tests on your page, picking up more conversions on the way.  In either situation, you’ll eventually hit a wall and struggle to get additional lift.  So how do you continue to improve?

Go for broke.  Try something you’ve never tried before.  It might end up being a total failure, but it also might give you the lift you want.

The gamble you make with optimization can end in 2 ways:

• You lose X amount of conversions over the week or two that the test is running
• You gain X amount of conversions for the effective lifetime of the page

The possible upside dwarfs the downside by a large margin and, either way, you learn something new and can optimize the next test more successfully based on what you learned.

Luckily, with skill and experience, the risks of testing are minimized, however beating a strong page is never easy or guaranteed.  But when you do find something new that works or see that your current page still is a champ, you can rest assured that you’re doing all you can to drive conversions.

Would you believe that? And if it were true, would it really mean anything to you? It shouldn’t.

I get asked this question fairly often and at first glance it seems like a logical question to ask, but really the focus should be elsewhere.

From my experience, conversion rates range from less than a percent all the way up to 30% or more. Does knowing that help me optimize my clients’ pages? No. Every page has so many variables internally and externally that it is very difficult and nonsensical to worry about the average conversion rate.

The goal of your page, differences between your product/service against your competition, target you’re trying to reach, avenues you advertise and numerous other factors all effect your conversion rates. A competitor having a higher conversion rate than you, does not mean you’re doing something wrong. Set the baseline for yourself and keep improving it. That’s how marketers should approach their conversion rate.

If you’re testing, you’ll find out if you’re campaign is performing suboptimal and find out what the optimal is at the same time.

Pretty amazing huh?

I don’t tell clients I’m going to get their conversion rates above industry averages, I tell them that I’m going to make their campaign as successful as possible. Do that and you’ll be ahead of competition and ahead of where you were when you first started.