Focus on Traffic or Conversion or both?

[Marty Foley]

Sometimes people wonder whether they should focus on
increasing traffic or improving website conversion rates.

My answer would be to focus on both. It doesn't have to
be an either/or situation.

To get a better perspective, consider how improving conversion
rates has been likened to fixing the holes in a leaky bucket.

Which makes more sense:

1) To keep pouring more and more water (traffic) into
a bucket that keeps leaking out through the holes (conversion
killers) in the sales process, or...

2) To plug the holes in the bucket as you continue to add water
to it?

Once you get the hang of improving conversion, here's
what's exciting to watch (as I've enjoyed with my own
and my clients' sites):

Finding where the holes exist in a site's sales process,
making appropriate tweaks to it, and then watching it
generate more leads, sales, subscribers, and profit -
without a single extra visitor.

Maybe I'm just a weird "mad scientist" but that's a fun,
satisfying process.

Marty Foley

[Marty Foley]

Here's an interesting quote by Bryan Eisenberg that underscores the importance of focusing on improving conversion rates over other online business tasks:

<i>"The bottom line is that to be successful online, <b>you must make conversion your first priority</b>. Only when you have a successful, efficient 'machine' that gets the most from your existing traffic do you have an enterprise in which it makes sense to invest further marketing capital."</i>

Marty Foley

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Join Ebiz Mastermind (http://EbizMastermind.com/) to convert more traffic into buyers, leads, subscribers and higher profit!

[Marty Foley]

You've probably heard the quote "Successful people are willing to do the things unsuccessful people are unwilling to do."

It appears that this is the case with online A/B split and multivariate testing. Notice the following quote from JupiterResearch (Copyright 2007, Business Wire)...

<i>Outlined in a new report published by JupiterResearch "Multivariate Testing Agenda: Overcoming Challenges and Building Strategies for Success," only 31 percent of website decision makers have deployed multivariate or A/B testing programs. Among this group, however, 79 percent have increased registrations per visit, 74 percent have improved customers' satisfaction, and 68 percent have increased conversion rates.</i>

Notice this quote from President of JupiterResearch, David Schatsky:

<i>"Any company concerned about maximizing the return on its online marketing and site operations spending should look at incorporating testing as standard operating procedure."</i>

Testing is one important way we can differentiate ourselves from, and outperform, competitors who don't.

Marty Foley