There has been a lot of talk about the current economic climate, the credit crunch, the stock market tanking, government bailouts, the impending recession or even depression. Everywhere you look there seems to be bad news. But it doesn’t do any good to dwell on these things. At the same time, it doesn’t mean we can safely ignore them. How, then, should companies react to the situation we are currently in? In terms of website optimization, there are few things companies should be focusing on:
Focus on conversion rates
Conversion rates are the rate at which your visitors convert any defined goal on your website. Conversion rates are likely to go down as consumers tighten their belts.
Goals are the cornerstone to measuring conversion rates. There can be different types of website goals – for example to sell a product, to gain a sales lead, to drive traffic to a special offer, or to build awareness about a new feature. Each goal is defined by the confirmation page, or the final page when you consider the goal to have been reached. In the case of selling a product, the goal would be defined by the confirmation or thank you page after placing your order. In the case of my site, whose primary purpose is lead generation, the goal I should be measuring is the Thank You page after a visitor submits the contact form.
If you are using Google Analytics, set up some goals if you haven’t already done so. They are very easy to set up and will offer tremendous insight into visitor behavior.
Test and test some more
Good companies use the lean years of a downturn to optimize the hell out of their businesses. They invest in themselves and focus on getting internal processes running efficiently. The strong companies survive by coming out of a recession even stronger. The same applies to websites, which have a virtually limitless optimization potential.
With free tools such as Google Website Optimizer, it is cheap and easy to set up A/B and multivariate tests to optimize your site. This is the time to try out different landing pages or to move around elements on your home page. Try simplifying sign-up forms or reducing the number of steps in the checkout process. Not all optimizations will work but you will find your website to be continuously improving. The best sign of improvement – higher conversion rates!
Get innovative
Some of the best companies today were born during the last downturn. They used this time to innovate. Rather than lament the current situation, why not get creative and try some bold new ideas? Try ideas you ordinarily wouldn’t even consider. A/B testing offers the perfect environment to do this since you can easily try out an idea with a small sample of your visitors.
Joann.com successfully did this several years ago when they ran a series of product promotions and measured the results of each with a multivariate testing tool by Offermatica (later acquired by Omniture). They found, much to their surprise, that the least “serious” offer – buy two sewing machines and receive 10% off – was in fact the most successful. It turned out that people were ordering together with friends and neighbors to take advantage of this promotion.
This is a case study that shows how crazy ideas can turn out to be pretty good ideas. And by using A/B and multivariate testing, there is little risk in not trying them out!
