by Monika Beck | Featured Contributor
Marketing is never an easy task. Once you find something that works, it isn’t guaranteed to work forever. That’s why you need website goals and objectives. You want your website to perform well. You want sales, loyal customers, and more phone calls or emails from potential leads. Guess what? A mere 11% of B2B marketers feel their website is “very successful”. That’s for achieving their website goals and objectives.
The other 89% of B2B marketers are stuck with methods that just don’t work. We constantly wonder “Why?!” and get frustrated. It sucks when we put hours and hours in to a campaign only to find that it didn’t work!
Does this describe you? Then read on! The following three questions are about web conversion optimization and maximizing your website’s efficiency.
Q1: Web Conversion Optimization? What is that?
Before we get started, let’s define two common industry terms. Web optimization refers to page load speeds. “Web optimization” often leaves out the most important marketing element! Getting users to convert or take action!
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is optimizing for conversions, whatever they may be. Marketers want conversions for all their marketing, not just digital marketing. Combine the two and you have web conversion optimization. This is the continual improvement of a website to hit conversion goals more often.
This is extremely broad, so let’s add some meat.
Keeping up on your website goals and objectives may mean more than getting conversions. How can you do this?
Improve the performance of your website through:
- A/B testing
- Usability testing and improvements
- Reducing page load speeds by optimizing images and video content
- Content optimization
Define your website’s objectives or key performance indicators (KPIs). Set up tracking metrics to mark completion of those objectives. Track conversions when a web visitor follows up on your call to action.
For example:
- Signing up for your newsletter
- Contacting your company
- Making an online or in-store purchase
- Creating an account/subscribing
- Downloading an app
Q2: How do we get involved in optimizing our website? That’s the web developer’s job!
We know, we know – web developers are the ones going in and changing the code. As a marketer, you have no direct control over it. But you have to have a say, or else the site may be poorly optimized. Give your web developer your website goals and objectives. Yes, let her handle the code – but tell her what you need the website do.
Remember how only 11% of B2B marketers feel their website is “very successful” in achieving the objectives they have set for it? Web conversion optimization is the solution! Set objectives and KPIs that are attainable and can be tracked.
Digital marketing is predicted to grow by 14.7% in 2016. Traditional marketing is predicted to decline by 1.1%. That may not come as a shock to you. Your suspicions are true. Digital is quickly overtaking traditional and companies need to get on board or get left in the dust.
Q3: OK, that’s great, but… where do I start? How can I optimize for web conversions?
The most important place to start is the actual webpage where the web conversion will take place.
Places like:
- A landing page
- A contact page
- An online tool
- An application page
- A shopping cart
There are plenty more possibilities. Which page is that for your site? Do you even have a call to action or conversion page on your website? Time to figure it out! After optimizing the pages where most conversions take place, go to the largest “feeder” pages. Feeder pages are the web pages with the most visitor traffic that feed our landing pages or conversion pages.
So we defined web conversion optimization. It’s continually tweaking your website until you get the desired outcome. Then we determined the marketer’s role in setting goals and objectives for your website. Finally, we looked at the perfect starting place for optimization – the landing page. The place where users fill out a form, buy, or convert.
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Savvy web designer with a twist – Monika Beck with Webene – San Diego, CA.
Monika Beck is passionate about website design, web programming, ecommerce, and building businesses. She is a serial entrepreneur and the cofounder of Success Harbor a website dedicated to help entrepreneurs succeed. Success Harbor interviews successful entrepreneurs and publishes topics relevant to business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs. Monika started Success Harbor with her cofounder in order to ease the life of entrepreneurs through original research, tips and unique content. Monika is also cofounder of Webene, a website design and online marketing firm based in San Diego, CA. Webene specializes in mobile-friendly responsive websites built on the WordPress platform. Monika loves playing classical music on the piano.
Savvy web designer with a twist – Monika Beck with Webene – San Diego, CA.
Monika BeckMonika Beck is passionate about website design, web programming, ecommerce, and building businesses. She is a serial entrepreneur and the cofounder of Success Harbor a website dedicated to help entrepreneurs succeed. Success Harbor interviews successful entrepreneurs and publishes topics relevant to business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs. Monika started Success Harbor with her cofounder in order to ease the life of entrepreneurs through original research, tips and unique content. Monika is also a web designer and cofounder of Webene, a website design and online marketing firm based in San Diego, CA. Webene specializes in mobile-friendly responsive websites built on the WordPress platform. Monika loves playing classical music on the piano.
