It’s all well and good attracting eyeballs to your website. But do you know what will help the wallets of those visitors creak open while they’re there? Well, according to new research by Experian, nearly two thirds of Australian marketers have never heard of or don’t understand conversion optimisation, the process of refining a website to help increase the conversion rate of sales, leads or subscribers, with almost half of those surveyed spending 40 percent or more of their budget driving traffic to their website.
Despite this ongoing investment, nine out of ten (89 percent) marketers are not using conversion optimisation tools to improve their website performance. Of those who do use it, 97 percent have a clear understanding of what customer actions have the greatest impact on the success of their website.
The research also assessed web evaluation and showed that 30 percent of marketers either do not evaluate the success of their website, or only evaluate on an annual basis. A further 25 percent assess their website biannually. This lack of engagement and measurement of their websites means that most marketers have no idea which small, simple changes could be made to their websites to significantly increase conversion rates.
Of those marketers who use and understand conversion optimisation, over half have a website conversion rate of over 11 percent, which is more than double the percentage claimed by respondents who have never heard of conversion optimisation.
“Australian marketers are spending large amounts of their annual budgets on activities to drive traffic to their website, but are neglecting to invest time and energy in the customers who actually visit to convert them into buyers,” Neil Boulton, director of digital marketing at Experian says. “Without the commitment and ongoing investment into optimising visitor conversion rates, marketers are missing a massive opportunity to maximise the return on their traditional and online advertising investments.”
Additional key findings from the Experian research include:
- Those marketers that have engaged in conversion optimisation regard it as a critical part of their online marketing strategy, with one in two ranking conversion rates as the most effective way to measure website success.
- Of those marketers that haven’t heard of conversion optimisation, 26 percent indicated they don’t know what has the greatest impact on the success of their website.
- Marketers who use conversion optimisation are eight times more likely to know what impacts the performance of their website compared to those that don’t perform conversion optimisation.
- 49 percent of marketers who use conversion optimisation rank conversion rates as the best way to measure the success of websites. And almost 60 percent plan to increase or significantly increase what they spend on tools to improve web conversion over the next 12 months.
- The biggest increase in marketing spend over the next 12 months will be on website updates, with 55 percent of marketers intending to increase or significantly increase their overall online spend during the next year.
Marketers’ annual online marketing budget spend includes on average:
- 17 percent on creative and design
- 14 percent on content development and updates
- 13 percent on hosting, software and licenses.
“Getting started with conversion optimisation processes and tactics is a huge opportunity for all Australian marketers. Testing layouts, forms, sales funnel processes and calls to action are just some areas that could reap significant improvements in website conversion rates.”
- In response to the increasing challenges that marketers face, a full report of the Experian research will be available in a whitepaper ‘Beyond SEO and PPC: The next generation of online marketing’ that reveals the missed opportunities to enhance visitor conversation rates. To receive this paper in December, please contact Callum Bruford at n2n communications [email protected].
