Happy new year to everyone! For many of us in business, this coming year could be the toughest for a long time – the recession has barely begun and incomes are likely to fall. That’s why I’m concentrating on maximising return on investment from online marketing at the moment, primarily by increasing the conversion rate of the websites I work on.
Being number one in Google and getting all the traffic in the world to your site won’t mean a thing if those people don’t turn into paying customers. Conversely, improving your conversion rate from 1% to 2% without getting a single additional visitor would mean doubling your site’s income. That’s why testing what works in turning visitors into customers is probably the single most important thing you can do to your website.
With that in mind, I’ve written a short(ish!) presentation for the Business Link eBusiness Programme called “Converting Website Visitors into Customers”, which I’ll be delivering around the East Midlands in January. You can find the date and venue nearest you here – it’s free to attend for small/medium sized businesses.
I will be writing about my experiences of what works and what doesn’t, as well as how best to test, in the coming months, as well as continuing to keep an eye on search engine optimisation, pay per click and all the other forms of online marketing. For now, I recommend you start by checking out Google’s Website Optimizer tool – free testing software to help improve your conversion rate. Happy testing! 🙂