We’ve worked hard over the past year optimizing a website.  Traffic has increased substantially, the site ranks in the top 10 for the most important keywords and yet…there has not been as many leads as we had hoped.  What do we do now?

There can be a number of reasons why people are not converting – The wrong keywords are being targeted, we are not optimizing for the right part of the buying cycle, the landing page stinks, the call to action is wrong (or even worse, missing), etc etc.  If users are not converting…we need to determine why.

The first thing to do is to evaluate the conversions we already have:

• Which keywords led to conversions?

• When the user arrived on the site, what did they do?  Where did they go?  What did they look at before they converted?

• How many visits before they converted?

• What page drove the conversion?  Which call to action did they follow?

Once we have taken a look at some of this data we can start to think about what we are doing right and what we need to do better.  If a particular page or keyword is converting exceptionally well, try using the same strategy on other pages.  By evaluating the leads we have, we can best understand what the users are looking for.

After assessing conversions, the next step is to dig into the rest of the site:

Referring keywords – Which keywords are bringing in a high number of visits but are not converting?  Once we have picked these out, we can start to think about why:

• Does the landing page accurately represent the keyword?

• If I was looking for this product, does the page have the information I need?

• What stage of the buying cycle does this keyword represent?  Ex: If someone is only doing research, the page needs to capture that and help them take the next step – “Contact us for more information” vs “Speak to a Sales Rep”.

Bounce Rates – The bounce rate can definitely tell us which pages need improvement.  On the pages with the highest bounce rate:

• Which keywords are people searching to land on this page?

• Is there a call to action on the page?  Is it appropriate?

• How can we make the page better?

• Is there enough content?  Is there too much content?  Is it the right content?

Take a good look at the page, the keywords and the target market.  The great thing with bounce rates is we can actually see whether or not changes are positive or negative (with time of course).  Test out a couple of different pages and see what works best.

Visitor Actions – When people are coming to the site what are they doing?  Choose a handful of visitors and follow their paths.

• What pages did they visit?

• How long did they stay on each page?

• What page did they exit?

• Did they come back?  If so, how did they get there?  Where are they are in the buying cycle?

This can not only help us understand the visitors better but it can certainly show us where we need to improve the site.

And so………

Now that we have taken some steps to better understand the website and visitors, we need to start putting some of these things into action.  Start by testing out different landing pages – modify content, images, calls to action, keyword strategies, etc.  Find what works.

The more we understand why people aren’t converting, the better chance we have of improving conversions and in turn the business.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 23rd, 2008 at 1:47 pm and is filed under B2B, General, Lead Generation, Search Engine Marketing Blog, Search Engine Optimization. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Bookmark and Share