On the Importance of Visitor Conversion

The Importance of Visitor Conversion

October 2004

Everyone covets that number one Google ranking, and I'm often just as guilty as the rest. I don't like seeing my competitors inch up or pass me in the search results pages. With that same motivation, prospective clients come to me looking to improve their search engine rankings because this, they feel, will turn their sites into moneymaking powerhouses.

Yet spending money on search engine marketing or online advertising might be a waste of your resources if your site is a poor converter. A Web Site Visitor Conversion occurs when a user takes a key action on your site. Conversions can be macro (the most significant action) or micro (one of the many actions that precede the macro conversion). For most sites, conversions are what can be directly or indirectly traced to a financial return. Often times Web sites are not built with conversion in mind - the copy is not persuasive, key pages lack well-highlighted calls-to-action, the home page is the only page that has a marketing focus, etc. So spending money on more traffic doesn't make sense until you're sure you'll get a sufficient percentage of those visitors converting and, thus, a reasonable return on your investment.

While it might take a sophisticated Web analytics tool along and some deep analysis to really understand visitor conversion on a Web site, there are basic conversion metrics that can calculated using data from the Web reporting tools included with most hosting plans.

First, you must define what the macro conversion is for your site. For lead-generating sites the macro conversion is generally a submitted contact form. For commerce sites the macro conversion is a purchase. Your macro conversion will depend on what type of site you have. Once you've determined what your macro conversion is, the next step is to figure out how to measure the number that happened on your site. If a form submission triggers an e-mail to your sales department, then collecting and counting those e-mails will work. To measure online purchases, most e-commerce Web sites include basic reporting that includes a summary of orders. Once you have counted the number of macro conversions over a specific period of time you need to find out how many visitors came to your site during that same time period. This figure is available from your Web statistics report. Check with the firm that hosts your site for instructions on accessing your Web reports.

Then calculate your conversion rate:

Conversion Rate = (# conversions) / (# visitors)

Although the analysis could be taken to a more sophisticated level (e.g., by removing search engine robots from the visitor count or segmenting visitors into meaningful groups to compare conversion rates), this basic metric is a critical one to know before you spend money on any sort of traffic generation.

Weidman Consulting can help you not only determine the conversion rate of your site; we can help you improve it.