While the art of the sale is ages old, digital tools have done quite a bit to innovate the entire process from start to finish. One of the most fundamental updates for marketing through these tools has been website conversion optimization and the resulting metric called “conversion rate“ used to denote those individuals who actually following through with a goal achievement–such as a sale–over the number of total browsers, or those just looking around.

As you can imagine, there are many many people simply “looking around” on any given website, and what a company like ours specializes in is getting those looky-loos to follow through with a positive outcome or goal achievement. All of the SEO, external advertising, or link-building in the world can send tons of traffic to a page, but how can you best ensure a sale once they arrive? This is the art of conversion optimization.

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Defining “conversion optimization” for small businesses

As you might expect, a “conversion” can involve a lot of different things for many different businesses. The one consistent factor is a goal achievement or positive outcome, small or large, for every successful conversion. While large goal achievements like a newly closed sale or a purchase of any kind online or off are best, smaller conversions such as a new email subscriber or social follower can be highly valuable as well. Sometimes these smaller conversions can lead to larger conversions later on, all acting as part of a “conversion funnel” throughout the digital sales process. At a minimum, it’s essential that your website enables some form of initial connection between the visitor and your brand.

While there are many robust solutions that control and segment the entire customer relationship after first contact known as CRM or customer relationship management systems for salesmen to continue following up with clients (our favorites are our favorites Infusionsoft or Streak), what we’re discussing today is more specific to the initial exposure a visitor has with your brand through your digital properties and the immediate outcome. What we want to do with great conversion optimization is not only get your visitors in the front door, but to the metaphorical cash register line–such as a contact form submission or e-commerce sale–as well.

Key #1: The importance of solid analytics in conversion optimization

What makes conversion optimization both fun and fascinating is the fact that statistics and analytics play such a major role throughout the entire process. While Google Analytics is–somewhat–free, we feel there are a host of other, higher quality systems out there at great value as well. While every business’ needs are different, we really love KISSMetrics right now starting at $49/month for our clients. It offers the most user friendly setup and customization we’ve seen yet, plus their API lets engineers (like ours!) create tracking for almost any kind of digital event–such as a click on a button, or a view on a contact form or shopping page–very easily.

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