Increasing Conversions Not Traffic Is The Internet Marketing Goal
All of the attention that internet marketers give to search engine algorithm changes and social network shares can make it seem like the whole point of advertising online is to build traffic to your website. While traffic is an important metric in your internet marketing, the real point of online advertising is to generate sales, and the really important measure of how effective your online marketing has been is its conversion rate.
Internet advertising generally takes the form of a Cost Per Click (CPC) or a Cost Per Impression (CPM) ad that appears on websites that meet the target criteria for that specific advertisement. CPC ads cost the advertiser for every click that they attract while CPM ads cost advertisers a set amount for every thousand online impressions, a determined display time that the ad appears on a targeted website. In 2011, an average CPC ad was worth just over $1 for every click while CPM ads cost an average of just under $4 for every thousand impressions. These ads had an average click through rate (CTR) of 0.4% and an average conversion rate from click throughs of 5.3%1. This works out to a couple of conversions for every thousand times the ad is displayed online. With the amount of effort that it takes to attract this traffic, it is vital that when it does visit that your website makes as many conversions as possible.
The conversion rate of your internet advertising is the number of people that click through to your website via one of your ads and engage in the advertised activity like joining an e-mail list or making a purchase. If your conversion rates are below 5% of your CTR then you are not getting enough value out of your online marketing regardless of how much traffic your website is getting. If this is the case, it may be worth looking at a couple of statistics for your website to see how engaged your visitors are when they visit.
The first statistic to check is the bounce rate, or the number of visitors that leave your website without any engagement. If your bounce rates are over 50%, that is if more than half of your visitors aren’t looking through your website, then you may need to rethink your content or your web design. Even if your visitors are clicking on a few of your internal links, they may just be scanning your content without taking the time to engage. The second important statistic to consider is the average time spent on the site. The longer that your visitors spend and the lower your bounce rates are the more opportunity that you have to convert the web traffic to a sale. Viewed this way the real focus of internet marketing shouldn’t be on the traffic that it generates but on the amount of conversions that it is delivering.
It is still important to have a steady stream of traffic to your website as this is how the conversion opportunities are produced, but it is vital to have the right content to inspire them to convert once they are on your site. The key to this is to build trust in your audience by giving your visitors a good experience on your site through providing quality content that helps them to make an informed choice and promises to deliver satisfaction. InfintechDesigns.com has the skills and the expertise to construct an online advertising campaign for your business that will not only attract the traffic to your website but also convert that traffic at a rate that will justify the time and expense that you put into your online marketing efforts.
References:
1. http://www.hochmanconsultants.com/articles/je-hochman-benchmark.shtml
