Month: January 2017

Categories
Digital Marketing

Is it Time for a PPC Audit?

When’s the last time you looked at your PPC account? Is it doing well? That’s no excuse to leave it running on autopilot. When you audit your account, you’re looking deep into the nuts and bolts, trying to determine if there are areas that need work or some extra attention to improve performance.

 

When Should You Audit?

You can audit your account just about any time you want, because chances are you’ll always find something to improve your results. But, you should avoid audits when you’ve recently made changes to your strategy or made an account update. This is because the data could be skewed, which ultimately steers your audit in the wrong direction.

You should always audit the account when it switches from one account manager to another. The simple fact is that each account manager will set things up the way they prefer – in the way that works best for them. And what works for them may or may not work well for you.

I mean, think about how you have your phone set up – you have the apps you use most often on your home screen, right? But if someone else were to use your phone, they’d either have to download more apps, or move things around to get it the way they’d like it. It’s the same thing with PPC accounts. Do an in-depth audit when you take over management of any account.

 

Why Should You Audit?

You should audit your account if you’re having performance issues. You may want to audit the account when the same person has been taking care of it for a while, just so you can get a fresh perspective. You should always edit to seek improved performance.

 

Who Should Audit

It depends on why you’re auditing. If you’re auditing because of a certain issue in your account, then you could handle it yourself. It’ll be easier because you know the exact areas you need to dig into to solve the problem.

But, if you’re really digging deep for a comprehensive audit, consider outsourcing it. Why? Well, if you’ve been managing the account for any extended period of time, you’re slightly biased because you know you uploaded it, and you thought it would work. It may be harder for you to be objective, face the fact the that what you thought would work isn’t, and change it. And, if you set up the account, it’s easier to overlook the basics under the assumption that you set up everything correctly when you initially started the account.

 

How to Audit

Set up your date range

Go beyond 30 days – you need more conversion data than that. If you’re diagnosing a specific issue, look at the last three months. If you’re setting up for a general audit, look at the last year.

Make sure you know your key performance indicators (KPIs)

Without a solid understanding of the KPIs you’re going after, you won’t know the metrics you really need to dive into. If you’re handling an account audit on your own account, you’ll know what these are. But if you’re handling the audit for someone else, double check with the client or account manager to make sure you’re focusing your efforts where they need to be.

Make sure you’re properly tracking conversions

This is a huge mistake, because without the right conversion data, you can’t see whether all the PPC is actually working to help you, or the client, reach goals. This, of course, should be done as one of the first things during account setup, but a report shows only 29% of more than 2,000 audited accounts had effective conversion tracking – so it’s worth saying.

Why is that conversion tracking so important? Without proper conversion tracking, you won’t be able to determine which keywords aren’t earning you conversions. You should be spending a large portion of your budget on keywords you know have a history of producing conversions, because these are the terms your audience is finding you with.

Looking at the 29% of accounts that had proper conversion tracking in place, we see that 61% of the budget was spent on keywords that never converted. That means more than half of their ad spend was wasted. Of course, the more you spend on AdWords, the less gets wasted, but the average account wastes more than ¾ of their budget targeting the wrong search terms.

That wasted ad spend can be found and reallocated once you have the right conversion methods in place.

What happens to your cost per conversion if you’re continually wasting ad spend? It’s not as linear as you may think. Instead of a 10% increase in cost per conversion with a 10% wasted ad spend – you’re looking at an increase of 44% to 72%. And that increase goes up with every 10% wasted.

With a $10 cost per conversion, and a 30% wasted ad spend that increases to 40%, your cost per conversion goes up to $14.40-$17.20. But, if you decide to go a little crazy and bid on new keywords – and increase that wasted ad spend to 76%, then your new cost per conversion is $53.79 to $120.20.

That’s because the more money you waste on the keywords that don’t convert, the less money you can spend on the ones that do – driving your cost per conversion way up. And that trend occurs in every industry.

If your conversion tracking settings are wrong – the first thing you need to do is generate and implement conversion tracking code. Place it on the page that appears after a conversion is completed.

Check your targeting settings

Your campaign targeting settings take about five minutes to setup, so it makes sense to think you’ve got right and skip it. But, the truth is, a small mistake in this area can greatly affect your account performance. Double check your new campaigns to make sure the targeting settings make sense for the business – especially if the account has been in the hands of another manager in the recent past.

Check that the targeting is set to either the search network or the display network – not both. The networks target users in different scenarios/ And, metrics for each network are combined, which makes it hard to see how each one is doing. Plus, it takes away the ability to segment the budget by network.

If you’ve got campaigns targeting both – separate them now.

Use the search network when you’re working on a limited budget, and when you’re selling a product that people look for when they need it, like plumbers, electricians, HVAC professionals, and locksmiths.

Use the display network when you want to help familiarize people with your brand, when your sales process is long (to keep your brand at the top of mind with remarketing), and you have a sexy product that sells with images. You should also use it when you have compelling video assets.

You can still run campaigns on both at the the same time – but take the time to create a campaign for each network, allowing you to craft messaging for each network and control budgets and bids.

This way your data stays clean and it’s easier to make data-driven decisions for your business.

Check to make sure you’re setup for the right target locations, and that you’ve set your mobile bid adjustments accordingly, so your ads can show on mobile, if desired.

Check ad group relevance

Look through your ad groups to make sure none of them have more than 15 to 20 keywords. Clean up the ones that do. This is to keep data simpler for you, because larger groups won’t impact your performance.

You’re serving the same set of ads of all the keywords in each group, so if the list of keywords is too big, you’ll end up having to write generic ad copy. It’s better to break the ad groups into smaller chunks of keywords so you can create more specific ad copy for each semantic theme. This ensures your copy is more reflective of what the searcher is looking for – increasing the likelihood they’ll click om your ads.

Look at number of ads per ad group

If you’ve only got one active ad in each group, the previous account manager wasn’t testing ad variations. This can limit your account optimization. But, if you’ve got too many ad variations in each group, it can be hard to see which ones are performing the best. Aim for two to three variations in each ad group so you can more effectively test. Once you’ve found a winner, stop the losing ads, and test a new variation.

Setup ad extensions, if they’re not already

If you don’t have any ad extensions, get to it. The extensions do affect the rankings, but just putting them there isn’t good enough. You need to make sure the extensions are appropriate for the business itself.

If you’re using call extensions, make sure the phone lines are well-staffed so they can handle the call volume. If you can’t have someone there to man the phones 24/7, make sure the extension is only set to run during business hours. If you’re running an e-commerce store, make sure to get rid of location extensions so the ads won’t appear in Google Maps.

Check automated extensions to make sure they’re not negatively affecting your performance. Usually, they don’t, but if you notice they are, opt out to avoid wasted ad spend.

Check your keyword match settings.

A quick refresher:

  • Broad: Your ad may show for searches that include any of the keyword terms, including related searches, relevant variations, synonyms, and misspellings.
  • Modified Broad: Your ad may show for searches that contain all the terms, preceded by a + sign, in any order.
  • Phrase: Your ad will only show when the search query has the keywords in the exact order you enter them – but other words are allowed before and/or after the phrase.
  • Exact: Your ad will only show for searches that are the exact keyword phrase by itself.

A common mistake is to run all the keywords with the same type – which Google defaults to broad. While they can get you plenty of traffic from people searching, they won’t necessarily convert well because they’re only loosely related to your business. Using all phrase or exact match, however, can be just as bad, because this can greatly damper the search volume.

Look at what’s there and determine the strategy behind it – and how well it’s been working. Make adjustments accordingly.

Look over your negative keyword lists

Use negative keywords to defend against impressions and clicks from the searchers that aren’t qualified. If the account manager before you didn’t use this strategy, you have a lot of work to do. Look at your reports to see the terms that have been triggering your ad, and then look through them to see if there are any terms you don’t want to continue show for. If you find them, set those as negative.

If there’s already a list of negative keywords, look over them closely. Make sure all of them are a good fit and aren’t stopping impressions for your keyword. Check the negative keyword match settings to make sure they’re behaving as intended.

 

Create Your Plan of Action

Now that you’ve gone over everything in the account, it’s time to craft a strategy for improvement. You know exactly what you need to do to get the account in good shape, and can start tackling it one task at a time. Audits may not be fun, but they’re a necessary part of the journey.

How often do you audit your own PPC accounts?

Categories
Content Marketing

How to Make Your Content Go Viral in 2017

This post originally appeared on Sachs Marketing Group.

Have you ever wondered what makes content go viral? While sometimes it is just the luck of the draw, there’s been research to show what makes some types of content do better than others online.

In this infographic, we break down the key things you need to create viral content: sharability, emotion, readership, imagery, and usefulness.

Copy and paste the code below to share this image on your site!

Categories
Uncategorized

Employee Engagement: Why Failing Can Hurt Your Business

When’s the last time you talked to your employees about how they feel about working for you? If you answered “Never” or “I can’t remember”, this is for you. I want you to think about how happy your team is to be working with you, and how their general attitude affects your business – profit margins and otherwise.

 

What is Employee Engagement?

Employee engagement isn’t a measure of satisfaction, which only tells you how content your employees are. Engagement on the other hand, is a measure of their emotional commitment, their motivation, and their level of involvement in their position with your company. Gallup reports that in 2015, only 32% of employees in the U.S. are engaged, a number that has stayed relatively consistent since 2000. Half of employees were “not engaged” and 17.2% were “actively disengaged.”

What’s the difference between someone who is “not engaged” and someone who is “actively disengaged”?

The “not engaged” staff members are the ones who are basically checked out from their jobs. They’re getting through their workday, putting in their time, but not their passion or their energy. The “actively disengaged” are more than just unhappy at work. They’re the ones who are actively acting out of unhappiness – undermining the efforts their engaged counterparts are working to achieve every day.

 

Signs of Engaged Employees

Engaged employees show enthusiasm, motivation, and confidence. They are inspired by their managers and empowered to do their work in the way that works best for them. They are willing to work together to get the job done, no matter what it is – helping each other as necessary for the greater goal, and they do it without gossiping, making excuses, lying, or complaining, you’ve got one heck of a team!

 

Signs of Disengagement

Not sure whether your staff is engaged or disengaged? There are lots of signs your team isn’t as engaged as they could be, though some are subtler than others. If you notice there’s a lot of complaining and gossip, or there’s one employee in particular who always seems less than enthused when there’s a new task or project, that’s definitely a disengaged employee. If the team member doesn’t want to help anyone else on their team, or insists upon working alone, then this is a problem. Ultimately, they do not support a healthy, good, company culture.

 

Causes of Disengagement

Many things can cause an employee to disengage from their job, and unfortunately, all it takes is a single incident. Some of the issues contributing to disengagement include:

  • Unhappy with the relationship with direct management – this is the number one reported cause of employee disengagement with 75% of employees saying the worst part of their job is their boss. 33% of employees are willing to skip a pay raise if it meant their boss were to be fired.
  • Lack of confidence in senior management
  • Being overworked
  • Being underpaid
  • Work keeps them stressed – 83% employees report being stressed at work.

 

How Disengaged Employees Hurt Your Business

Disengaged workers are more likely to call in sick and to quit their job. In fact, statistics show companies lose $11 billion a year as a result of employee turnover. Not only this, but when they are working for you, they’re not productive. They’re likely getting the absolute bare minimum done, costing you more money than just payroll expenses. Overall, that lost productivity costs the U.S. economy between $450 and $550 billion a year.

If you’ve got disengaged employees directly interfacing with your customers, your customer service is suffering, too. More than half of consumers (60%) say they haven’t completed an intended purchase as a result of a poor customer service experience, costing businesses $83 billion in lost sales. It takes 12 positive customer experience experiences to negate the effects of that single poor customer service experience. And 52% of customers say they have switched companies over the past 12 months because of poor customer service.

Even a single disengaged employee is costing your business money in multiple ways. And chances are, unless you’re working with a small team, there’s more than one disengaged person working with you.

It’s important to keep an eye on engagement because it’s possible an employee who was once engaged and becomes disengaged, can cause more damage to your company than a staff member who was never engaged at all.

 

How Engaged Employees Help Your Business

Companies with engaged employees outperform those without by up to 204%. They’re productive. They help keep your customers happy. They share their ideas with you, which can help your company reach new levels of efficiency and profit.

 

Fostering Employee Engagement

If you’ve discovered your team isn’t as engaged as you’d hoped they would be, don’t panic. There are plenty of things you can do to try to bring those employees back to a higher level of engagement. Beware, however, that just as engagement didn’t decline overnight, you won’t be able to restore it overnight. Give it time, and remain consistent.

  • Be transparent. Share crucial company information, to prevent employees from jumping to their own conclusions. Keep your team updated on financial performance, both long-term and short-term goals, and let them know what it means for them and their jobs. Involving them in this aspect of your company helps them feel more connected to the company.
  • Keep high-level employees visible and accessible to others. Employees shouldn’t only be able to talk to each other and their direct manager. All high-level employees should be visible throughout the company. If an employee wants to speak to the CEO about an idea he has to save money or promote the business, he shouldn’t have to go through a lot of obstacles to be able to arrange a meeting.
  • Start at the top and let it trickle down. Work to make sure the employees at the top are engaged. It will trickle down to the people their managing, and so on. Build that strong, transparent bond with the people you’re managing, and the trend will catch on.
  • Thank your employees. Taking the time to thank your team for their hard work and recognize their accomplishments can do a great deal in keeping your team engaged. When someone feels valued and appreciated, it helps them build an emotional connection to the company, and you as their management.
  • Build genuine relationships.
  • Remain flexible. Yes, you should hold your employees accountable for their performance, but it’s also important to give them the flexibility they need. No one likes a micromanager, and how are you supposed to get things done yourself if you’re busy looking over what everyone else is doing all the time? Consider giving the option to work from home, or take a personal day. As long as they get their work done, and they do it well, not much else should matter.
  • Focus on behaviors and traits, rather than experience and education. Great experience can, but doesn’t always mean, a great employee. Focusing on the applicant’s behaviors and traits before anything else will help you see how they will fit into the company culture, and give you an idea of how the other employees will respond to the new hire. Those that are most likely to be engaged workers will show enthusiasm and excitement during the interview. They are also personable, and not afraid to speak up. Sure, a resume will tell you about their experience, but those aren’t necessarily all true.
  • Welcome and implement their input. Make sure to actively seek feedback from everyone. Institute an open-door policy so it’s easy for everyone to come to you. Some team members may not be comfortable reaching out to you to share their thoughts and feelings, so make sure you reach out to them directly to make sure they’re feeling heard.
  • Promote from within. If your staff thinks they are stuck in the same position and unable to advance their career, they’ll lose their motivation to do well for you. Whenever possible, promote form within to demonstrate that you are committed to helping your staff climb the ranks. They’ll work harder for you. Of course, the possibility remains that you’ll need to hire outsiders from time to time to fill vacancies, but doing what you can to promote someone who already works for you can greatly boost employee morale.
  • Make sure they’re taking breaks. Promote good work/life balance. No matter what needs to be done, and how long it will take, make sure your team is taking at least one 15-minute break other than their lunch break during an eight hours shift. Encourage people getting up and away from their desks during lunch. Encourage them to stop answering company email outside of their normal working hours, and especially when on vacation. Working too much or too often can lead to stress, which leads to burn out, which leads to disengagement. Managing work and life is hard – but there is a lot you can do as the employer to discourage, and even prevent it.
  • Use meetings sparingly. Many businesses seem to do nothing but hold meetings. If your team is always in a meeting, they won’t be able to get anything done. If they can’t get things done anyway, it will be much easier for them to disengage. Keep them meetings to a minimum, short, and to the point, to get the best results.
  • Get out of the office. Go have a brainstorming session at lunch away from the office. Go work outside. Sometimes feeling like you’re stuck in those same four walls at the time can cause stress and lead to burn out. Plus, brainstorming together helps everyone feel involved, and gives a chance to strengthen team building skills.
  • Reward creativity. Let support staff know it’s okay to come up with new ideas and implement them. When they know this is okay, they’ll understand how much you value their opinion. But, be careful when using rewards as an incentive to do a good job. If you reward everything all the time, it’s easy for the team to get comfortable and expect a reward, thus becoming complacent about the quality of work they’re doing.
  • Encourage health and wellness. No matter your profession, investing in keeping yourself and your team healthy is a good idea. Stress is bad for mental and physical health, so it pays to do what you can to keep everyone as healthy as possible. It doesn’t have to be a difficult task- it can be as simple as offering a free gym membership, or something like bringing massage therapists to the office once a week or once a month. Keep the break room stocked with healthy snacks. Every little bit helps.
  • Encourage team members to get to know one another better. Play games. Host parties and events outside of work, that take place somewhere other than the office. Plan a happy hour at the end of the week to let everyone relax and unwind.

 

Engagement is a Process

Start small and work gradually toward higher engagement. Watch for changes in how the employees interact with you, and one another. When you bring on new staff, either to replace someone who quits or gets promoted, or to expand operations to keep the current staff from being overworked, start the engagement process from day one.

Always keep the lines of communication open with your team, and encourage your management staff to do the same. Think before you invest in an employ engagement program. Get feedback from everyone and implement the changes you think will be most effective based on how they feel.

Do you feel your employees are engaged working with you? Share your experiences with me.

Photo credit: iStock

Categories
Digital Marketing

Conversion Rate Optimization: Signs You’re Doing it Wrong

As a marketer, you no doubt understand that without conversion rate optimization (CRO), you could have all the traffic in the world, and still risk not turning a profit. You probably know the things you should do – various best practices, split-testing – to convince your traffic to convert. You’re likely doing these things, and if you’re not – you should start now. But, if you’re working on CRO and not seeing the results you want, you could be using the wrong approach. Check these signs against your strategy to see if you’re on the right track.

 

You’re Relying Solely on “Best Practices”

CRO best practices often tell you to change the color of your button to make it stand out against the rest of your color scheme. They tell you to focus on drawing attention to the call to action – making it bigger, changing its color, and the like. While it’s true these making these minor tweaks can make a small difference in your conversion rate, they’re not doing anything to remove the larger, actual barriers to conversion.

  • Is your website loading quickly? A one-second delay in page loading time can result in a 7% decrease in conversions. If your website earns 100,000 a day, that delay could cost you $2.5 million annually in lost sales revenue.
  • Do your users trust your website? If you’re not sure, survey them to find out. If the answer is a resounding no, take steps to increase user trust. That’s another piece in and of itself, so I won’t get into it too much here, but you can add customer reviews, add trust symbols – Verisign, press logos, award badges – and make sure your contact information is easy to locate.
  • Are there too many steps in your conversion process? If it takes too long or is too complex, most people won’t go all the way through it. Go through and see if there’s anything you can do to eliminate steps and simplify the overall process.
  • Is your copy confusing? Have someone who’s never read it before read it and see if they understand what you’re trying to say. Better yet if they fit the profile of your ideal customer. Your copy can be long – this post is around the 2,000-word mark – users will scroll and read, if the content is engaging and provides value. If it’s garbage and fluffy, long-form content could be hurting you.
  • Is your call to action still obscured by unnecessary copy, images, and links?
  • Are your tags and AdWords campaigns leading your traffic to believe you offer something you don’t?

 

You’re Not “Friendly” Enough

Are you:

  • Browser Friendly? Are you optimized for the browsers your users are using the most? Check your site in all the main browsers and make sure it’s a stellar arrival for everyone.
  • User Friendly? Is it fast to load? Clear, and easy to understand?
  • Click Friendly? How many clicks does it take to get users where you want them to go? Keep it simple and don’t make them click 75 times.
  • Privacy Friendly? Do what you can to alleviate user fear that their information isn’t secure. Using SSL is a good place to start.
  • Mobile Friendly? Mobile traffic has overtaken desktop traffic, so if your users don’t have a good experience on their smartphones and tablets, you can bet that’s negatively affecting your conversions.
  • Language Friendly? English is not the only language people speak in the United States. In fact, there are more Spanish-speaking internet users in the USA than the entire internet population in the UK. Ignoring this fact could be costing you conversions.
  • Rating and Review Friendly? Do you have a system that allows people to leave ratings and reviews? Are you leaving the negative ones in place, but responding to them to help resolve the issues where possible?
  • Video Friendly? Including a video on your landing page is a good idea, if you use YouTube or a similar platform that doesn’t require the user to install plugins or additional software. The use of video can facilitate an emotional connection that helps drive conversions.

 

You’re Ignoring All Other Metrics

While you definitely what to focus efforts on getting users to convert – that is what CRO is all about – it’s not the only thing that matters. Conversion is a process. It’s up to you to show them the benefits and remove the barriers in the way of them converting, but ultimately they customer is the one who makes the final jump. Not all of them will, and you don’t want all of them to.

You’re not trying to manipulate your audience into purchasing your products and services if they are not right for them. You want to instead convert engaged users who will love what your business has to offer, and then talk about it will their friends. This helps your business grow. If you’re converting any person – you could harm your reputation because you end up with a bunch of unhappy one-off customers who didn’t get their needs met.

So yeah, conversion rate matters, but you should be paying attention to engagement metrics, too. Take a look at the following metrics alongside conversion rates, to get an idea of how engaged your audience is.

  • Visitor Recency: This tells you how long visitors are going between visits.
  • Visitor Loyalty: This tells you how frequently visitors are stopping by.

Don’t be afraid to make use of surveys to get feedback directly from your customers. Look at the satisfaction rates and determine the Net Promoter Score. Simply ask your customers:

On a scale of zero to 10, where zero is not at all, and 10 is definitely, how likely are you to recommend this company to your friends and family?

Anyone who rates from zero to six is considered a detractor. Anyone who rates at a seven or an eight is considered passive – these are the customers who could easily be swayed to either a detractor or a promoter status. The ones who rate you a nine or 10 are your promoters – the ones you definitely want to keep happy.

Now, subtract the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters and you’ll get your net promoter score. It can be anywhere from -100 (if you have nothing but detractors) to 100 (if you have nothing but promoters.)

The NPS will give you an indication of the overall perception of the brand, so it is an important metric. If customer satisfaction is low and you have a low NPS, chances are people aren’t getting good information about your company. This will obviously negatively affect conversion rates, and you’ll need to develop a strategy to address this issue before you can go back to focusing on CRO.

 

You’re Only Focused on Your Landing Page

The landing page matters, but it’s the first step in the conversion process. Your customer’s journey isn’t necessarily linear, and wherever those customers touch on your website as part of conversion, you should be focused. Each touch point is a chance for retargeting.

If your data indicates a high bounce rate rom your landing page, your conversion rate data may be skewed, suggesting that your marketing efforts may not be working as well as you want. This isn’t necessarily the case, because chances are your customers will have multiple points of entry.

There’s no need to push your customers through a landing page that forces them to sign up, then bombard them with exit-intent popups, offer popups and in-your-face calls to action. The reality is, most users will come to your landing page, click away, and then end up back on your blog or home page a week or so later. Working your marketing efforts to include a lot of off site work, too. Users will come to you when they are ready – so trying to stop them from leaving isn’t the answer.

 

You Think It’s All About Keywords

Keywords matter, of course, but it’s not like they used to. Keyword research is getting complex as search engines have shifted to a more natural approach. Now, we’re focused on user intent, rather than throwing basic keywords in there, so you have to take a step back and think about keyword intent, or what it is your audience is looking for.

The keywords you need to use depending on the type of conversion you’re after. Keyword intent can be broken down into basic categories: informational, navigational, and transactional. If you want more mobile searches to find your store, it’s best to use navigational language. If you want more people to download your content, use informational keywords. If you want to increase sales, which is usually the case, you’ll be targeting the transactional search terms.

 

You’ve Replicated a Site You Deem Successful

If you’ve mimicked a successful site in terms of layout, color scheme, and wording, and expect your conversion rate to go up, you could be in for a disappointment. It’s about more than making your website look more modern or cleaner.

The problem with this approach is, you may see an increase or you may not, because this approach isn’t based on data from your audience. If you do see an increase, it’s likely because at some point over the replication, you inadvertently removed at least one barrier to conversion.

If you rip off someone else’s website design, you’re not really accomplishing thing. Your changes are only cosmetic, and that’s only a small part of CRO. These changes don’t address the underlying issues that could be hurting your conversion rate, such as using the wrong keywords, or user concerns about security and privacy.

The only way you can be sure you’re addressing all the barriers to conversion is to rely on what the data shows you – looking at both your website analytics, user testing, and consumer feedback surveys.

 

You’ve Adjusted Your Strategy and Don’t See Results

Okay, so you’ve paid attention to the data and made changes, but you still don’t see the results you’re looking for. CRO isn’t going to happen overnight – and a single change, or even a collection of multiple changes – may not be the full answer.

Give it time. Keep looking at the data and see what it tells you. If ample time has passed and you should have seen results by now, start again. Compare the data from before the changes were made to after the changes were made. It will give you a good idea of where you need to start to get things moving on the right track.

If you’re using split-testing, be sure you’re split-testing one thing at a time since making too many changes at once can make it hard to isolate the change that contributed to the difference in conversion rate.

 

Focus on the User Experience

While the average conversion rate varies depending on industry, the global average conversion rate in the third quarter of 2016 was only 2.50%. That means out of every 1000 shoppers, around 25 of them actually made a purchase. That sounds depressing, but just gives us more reason to focus good CRO. Most websites have conversion rates under 5%, so even a small increase in conversion rate can make a big difference to your profit margins.

If you find you’ve been approaching CRO the wrong way, it’s okay. There’s always time to make it better, one test and implementation at a time. And if after that you’re not seeing results, it’s time to dig deeper to make sure there is nothing else wrong. Refer to the first point about best practices, and go through all of those before you deem your CRO strategy a failure.

Photo credit: iStock

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