Whose Fault is this concerning Conversions?

Marketing
1

I have one client that is complaining that her conversions are low - and they are. However, I’ve brought the traffic in through organic and referral means (that are targeted), her bounce rate is very low, the average pages viewed per visit is over seven pages, but no sales.
Every 1,000 visitors, there is about 2 conversions - not good at all.

Now, I didn’t design the site, but I was looking at the pics of the merchandise - and I think they are not that great. and believe me - this is the type of stuff you need to see detailed pics of if you want to buy it.

Sooooo, whose fault is this, because I feel like my client is blaming me for the low conversion rate?

2

You could use Google website Optimiser to split test different versions of important pages, try your version against her version, see which performs better.

You can also try using the ‘goals’ feature in google analytics to see where visitors are dropping out of the sales funnel.

3

Sounds like someone got the SEO steps backwards. The on page optimisation needs to come first so that you have web pages that are worth visiting and which will encourage the sales. Then you do the off site optimisation after that.

4

Yap i agree use google website opimizer

5

Stephen, wanna have another read of the OP and maybe try again with a relevant answer?

6

You don’t say what your role in the project has been, but it sounds like the SEO is outperforming the web design. If conversions are low, it may be because the referrals to the site are not sufficiently targeted and so a lot of people who would never buy anything from the site are looking at it, but it is more likely that the website itself is not doing a good enough job of selling the products - either because the on-site advertising (eg text, photos) are not good enough, or there is a poor purchase path through the site.

7

Nicely put.

8

That was a relevant answer.

this is the type of stuff you need to see detailed pics of if you want to buy it

So getting the pictures right so that people can properly see what is being sold so that they perhaps decide to buy would be the first step.

If the pictures are such poor quality that no one buys then the number of visitors you get through off site optimisation is irrelevant since it doesn’t matter whether you have one visitor who doesn’t buy or a billion visitors who don’t buy - either way you still haven’t sold anything and the latter could actually cost more for hosting making you worse off.

9

That was a relevant answer.

this is the type of stuff you need to see detailed pics of if you want to buy it

So getting the pictures right so that people can properly see what is being sold so that they perhaps decide to buy would be the first step.

If the pictures are such poor quality that no one buys then the number of visitors you get through off site optimisation is irrelevant since it doesn’t matter whether you have one visitor who doesn’t buy or a billion visitors who don’t buy - either way you still haven’t sold anything and the latter could actually cost more for hosting making you worse off.

Anyway why say my comment is irrelevant and then say “nicely put” when someone says something similar in different words.

10

Because you were talking about on-site SEO and he was talking about the website’s ability to convert traffic, two entirely different things. If you reread the OP you might see why your answer was and still is irrelevant.

You also suggested that he had his SEO backwards, not true and not relevant since we’re not even talking about SEO.

Feel me? :smiley:

11

My take on this is that either you’re ranking for the wrong phrases or the site is not doing a good job selling the products for some reason, which could easily include unappetizing graphics. Without the URL it’s kind of hard to make a more detailed diagnosis. As to where the blame lies, it depends on what your responsibilities are.

12

Because you were talking about on-site SEO and he was talking about the website’s ability to convert traffic, two entirely different things. If you reread the OP you might see why your answer was and still is irrelevant.

You also suggested that he had his SEO backwards, not true and not relevant since we’re not even talking about SEO.

Feel me?

JJ - your right on.

I talked to her yesterday (my client). She admitted that her prices are pretty high (no - I didn’t prompt her - those were the first words out of her mouth) - so I’m assuming that the state the economy is in - ppl aren’t going to be putting out big $$$ for something that really isn’t needed - in which she sells on her site.

13

Sounds to me that its the design. Surely the simplest thing to do is to test different designs.

http://www.ukpressreleases.co.uk/Television-Stands-Now-Available-For-Even-Thinner-Plasma-TVs.htm

14

Without a detailed analysis of many different factors, it’s not possible to “lay blame” based solely on the information provided.

Could be untargeted traffic – including, perhaps, targeted traffic that is too early in the buying cycle to be ready to pull out a credit card.

Could be poor product images, or lack of product images.

Could be poor product info.

Design could be terrible.

Could be the “add to cart” button or link is too subtle and people miss it.

Could be too many products are “out of stock.”

Could be a terrible checkout process. Checkout form sometimes doesn’t work. Asks for too much information, or requires too much information, too early. Accepts PayPal (or Google checkout) only but no standard merchant account.

Prices could be too high.

Shipping costs could be too high.

Shipping costs may not be provided until after the user goes into checkout and provides credit card info.

Could be the “look and feel” and the overall presentation fail to inspire trust in the user.

Could be poor hosting, such that pages load too slowly, or sometimes fail to load at all.

Could be luxury products with very elastic demand, and no one’s buying those products in the current economy.

Could be there are competitors offering the same or similar products at better prices with free shipping and a better warranty.

These possible reasons are just off the top of my head. I’m sure there are many more possibilities.

A detailed analysis needs to be done of traffic sources, keywords, the competition, visitor paths, the sales funnel and checkout process, a/b testing with different designs, etc.

15

So I used the term SEO when what I meant was the entire marketing process from start to finish including conversion, SEO and all other aspects of marketing. From what I have seen a lot of people refer to the entire process from start to finish as SEO even though that’s only a small part of it because there isn’t a similarly short reference to the entire process (or if there is most people don’t know what it is called).

16

Then you, as a more learned member of SP, should be making the effort to set a better example and to correct these misperceptions so that they don’t linger.

17

SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimisation”. That means that it covers aspects of your site such that involve search engines, such as ensuring that your relevant pages rank highly on key search terms and that the extract given on the SERP will lure people in. It most definitely does not cover any aspect of site usage once people have arrived at the right page from the search engine.

As you are the most picky and pedantic contributor that I have yet come across on Sitepoint (and by quite some margin), I would expect you to use important terms such as ‘SEO’ accurately and not in a misleading and incorrect way, just because you couldn’t be bothered to figure out what the right term was. If anyone else had described marketing and conversions as ‘SEO’ you would have pilloried them from here to December for their inaccurate use of language.