Conversion Rates Revisited – The One Percent Solution April 30, 2008
Posted by debbiepascoe in accessibility, high performance site analytics, privacy, quality, search engine optimization, usability, web analytics, web design, web standards.Tags: accessibility, cart abandonment, conversion, engagement, optimization, pivacy, quality, search, traffic, usability, web analytics
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In my last post, I noted that Coremetrics has begun releasing benchmark data collected from their ~300 clients. A couple of the stats really caught my attention:
- The typical conversion rate is 3.29%
- Conversions Where Site Search Was Used – 14.84% of consumers used site search during their visits – conversion rate 5.60%
- The shopping cart abandonment rate is 68.42%.
Wow….think about it….
- out of 100 people, only 3 of them actually complete the desired action. AND
- out of 100 people that begin a shopping cart, only 32-33 of them complete the transaction and buy something (through the website – we don’t know if they walked in the store later and concluded the sale there); AND
- of the people that use internal search, they convert at a much higher rate than the ones that do not.
While some of my esteemed colleagues have decided that it’s not about conversions, it’s really about engagement (I’m not naming names, you know who you are 
), it really is about conversions. That’s the bottom line. For every small improvement a site owner makes to improve their conversion rate or reduce their abandonment rate, they get repaid many times over. The philosophical diversion into “engagement” is really code for “we know people are leaving the site and completing the sale offline, we just don’t have a way to tie all the data together”. When that day comes, conversion will come back into vogue in a huge way.
Take this rate that Coremetrics has given us as a benchmark. If this conversion rate of 3.29% can be improved by one percent, sales would increase by 30%. That translates to real money. Similarly, 68 of 100 people walking out of your virtual store when they have things in their basket that they abandon in the last aisle represents real money that didn’t make it into the till. Everything that can be done to chip away at that represents real money.
So, how do you identify those improvements? Strip it back to its basic elements; look at what you’ve created – how usable is it, how findable is it, how free of defects, does it respect the visitor’s privacy, is it accessible to all potential customers? Are the key pages that lead people to the conversion event optimized? Do they have the right stuff in the right places with the right call to action to propel people forward and keep them moving forward to completion? You’ll notice these questions don’t have anything to do with studying how people have reacted to your site; rather they have everything to do with understanding deeply what you’ve given people to interact with. Traffic is a measure after the fact – it’s forensics. Evaluating traffic is great for understanding what people did; it is not a predictor of what they would do if things were different.
To help you visualize the impact that small improvements in conversion rates and abandonment rates can have, I’ve created a “conversion rate calculator”. I am not an accountant or finance expert. This is not complex econometric modeling. This is just a simple way for you to plug in some numbers that are meaningful to you to see that the impact over time is real and measurable. Have fun, dream big, and see what it might mean
Here’s the link to the Coremetrics Benchmark page.
Page Load Time Gets Googled March 16, 2008
Posted by debbiepascoe in ads and ad spending, page load times, quality, usability, web design.Tags: broadband, page load times, quality, usability, web design
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For years we have been telling site owners – and anyone else we talk to – that page weight matters. Occasionally, somebody would respond with something like ‘everybody has broadband, so that’s just not the problem it used to be’. There are several issues with this line of thinking.
First, as broadband has become more prevalent, page sizes have grown larger.
Second, code that enables tracking and more robust interactivity adds weight to the pages. While you are wondering why the page is taking so long, your browser is busy reading every single line of code in order to show you the page. Bloated code contributes significantly to page weight issues.
Third, the notion that broadband is everywhere has caused an explosion in the use of flash. Flash used thoughtfully can provide a richer, more satisfying experience for the visitor. Flash used with abandon and no alignment to business goals can provide a frustrating, confusing experience that is also inaccessible to visually impaired persons and invisible to search engines.
Last week Google weighed in on the page weight discussion, and in a big way. This month, Google has begun to measure the load times of advertisers’ landing pages. Once advertisers’ load time grades are provided to them, they will have 30 days to make necessary improvements before penalties begin to be applied. Google uses the measurement of landing page quality as a component of the advertiser’s “Quality Score”. Quality score impacts two things:
- The price the advertiser pays for keywords
- Ad placement
Here are four specific suggestions offered by Google to reduce page load time:
Use fewer redirects. Reduce the page size by using fewer, smaller, and more highly-compressed images. Do not use interstitial pages. Minimize the use of iframes on your landing page.
The good news is that this is a very manageable issue, from a technical perspective. The challenge, as it has always been, is for site owners to find the delicate balance that provides the best possible user experience without going overboard on design.
Web Analytics Myth Number 1: There aren't enough web analysts October 19, 2007
Posted by debbiepascoe in quality, web analytics, web design, web standards.Tags: accuracy, compliance, eMetrics, myths, quality, web analytics
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I just returned from eMetrics DC, where I talked about the five myths – we call them “myth-understandings” that are prevalent in the market today. This message resonated and, in fact, it was easy to see the light bulbs going on as we talked through what is myth and what is reality. It is fresh on my mind, already. Then this morning I received my email update from the web analytics forum, and one conversation thread was screaming “myth number 1 is alive and well and living in the forum!” Since I haven’t written in the blog before about the myths, I’ll list them out, then I want to talk specifically about number 1.
Here’s the countdown:
5. Accuracy doesn’t matter – random errors can and do occur, and as we saw in my previous post (Web Analytics Shootout), different vendors report different numbers even in a quality-controlled environment. That is not the same as the systemic errors that appear in data due to untagged pages, malfunctioning javascript, and site structural problems that in turn skew the data.
4. My checker checks out – Conventional scanners get 40-60 percent of site. They can only audit what they can access, which results in an inadequate and arbitrary subset.
3. One, done and run – Quality and compliance management is continuous process, not a one-time exercise. Because sites are becoming larger, more complex and more volatile, the need to continuously monitor quality and compliance is even more crucial.
2. Optimizing the suboptimal – significant time, effort and money being spent to optimize online performance. However, common approaches are violating a basic axiom of optimization theory: you cannot optimize in a suboptimal environment. Concurrent enhancement of the environment to improve data quality and correct site problems is essential to achieve positive and sustainable outcomes. To put it plainly, if the floor in my house is unlevel and the doors won’t close, the roof leaks and air blows in around the windows, it might not be the right time to fuss over just the right carpet.
And the number one myth…..there aren’t enough web analysts.
This is still an emerging market, and as with all emerging markets, it is suffering chronic labor shortages – this is nothing new or even unexpected. The real problem is not just a lack, but rather a WASTE of analysts. Too much of their time is spent manually checking, finding, and fixing problems that shouldn’t be there to begin with.
The conversation thread that got me going this morning started with a question about a Google Analytics implementation in a php environment, and why traffic is not being recorded – the code seems to be there, is there something special about php, well maybe you need to write some special script, etc., etc, – aaarrrgghhhhh! The time termites are eating away at this person’s precious limited resource, along with all the others who are trying to help him solve it. In so many organizations, site quality is an afterthought, and the web analysts are not equipped with the proper tools to do their job. They spend time on time-wasting exercises like this, when they could be focusing on how to drive value from their data.
Bottom Line:
There could be 10 times the number of analysts that we have today – wouldn’t matter. Without addressing this fundamental, foundational issue, there still won’t be enough. Fortunately, as we get out and debunk these myths, we are seeing the lights come on, the cobwebs disappearing, and people increasingly becoming clear-eyed about what they can do going forward to get control of their web environments.
