Companies can improve conversion rates and business performance by adopting a more systematic and comprehensive approach to testing and optimisation, according to research published today by Econsultancy and RedEye.
The Conversion Report 2010 found that companies whose conversion rates had improved over the last 12 months carried out on average three times more website tests than those whose conversion had not improved.
Additionally, organisations whose conversion had improved over the previous 12 months used nearly one and a half times more methods to improve conversion than those who had not seen an uplift.
The 2010 research, which follows a similar survey carried out a year ago, found that there has been a slight decrease in the proportion of companies that are dissatisfied with their conversion rates, from 39% in 2009 to 36% this year.
However, only 26% are “quite satisfied” and not one company reported being “very satisfied”, even though 70% of companies said that conversion rates had improved in the last 12 months.
The study found that the following techniques are considered to be most effective for improving conversion: A/B (split) and multivariate testing, customer journey analysis, cart abandonment analysis, user testing and online surveys or customer feedback.
The research, based on an Econsultancy survey of more than 700 digital marketers carried out in August and September 2010, looks at types of conversion and measurement used, as well as tools, strategies and processes employed for improving conversion rates.
The report, which contains information on RedEye’s four-stage process for improving conversion rates, also examines different areas of best practice.
Key survey findings:
• 70% of companies have at least one person directly responsible for improving conversion, up from 60% in 2009. The proportion of companies that have more than one person in place has significantly increased in the last year, from 20% to 37%.
• There has been a significant increase in the use of A/B testing, with almost half of companies surveyed (44%) now using this method. As was the case last year, customer journey analysis (54%) and copy optimisation (53%) are still the most commonly used approaches for improving conversion.
• Significantly more companies than last year are using segmentation. As was the case last year, demographic (58%), geographic (50%) and behavioural (47%) data are the most commonly used ways of segmenting visitors and customers. The two most common uses of segmentation are for customer analysis and email segmentation.
• Of those companies carrying out website testing, the majority (61%) say they do five tests or fewer each month. The proportion of organisations that undertake regular testing is still low.
Mark Patron, CEO of conversion specialists RedEye, said: “Having a structured approach to conversion was one of the most predictive characteristics of survey respondents who are having success with conversion. Some 89% of survey respondents who had a structured approach had seen an improvement in the last 12 months.”
Linus Gregoriadis, Research Director at Econsultancy, added: “It’s great to see more companies assigning responsibility for conversion rates to specific individuals. There is more understanding that improving conversion is about adopting a variety of best practices, techniques and technologies within an on-going framework of testing, measurement and optimisation.”
Other findings:
• Looking at the impact of different types of technology, web analytics plays the biggest role in improving conversion rates, with 83% of respondents saying this has a positive impact on conversion rates.
• The technologies that are most widely seen as having a negative impact on companies’ attempts to improve conversion rates are e-commerce platforms (31%) and content management systems (29%).
• 84% of companies who incentivised staff based on conversion improved their conversion over last 12 months.
• Nearly half of company respondents (48%) felt that they had very little or no control over conversion and this has got worse since last year. Not surprisingly, perceived control over conversion rates leads to an improvement in conversion rates.
• Respondents frequently cited limited time and resources as major barriers to improving conversion rates.
The full Econsultancy / RedEye Conversion Report 2010 is available for download here:
http://econsultancy.com/reports/conversion-report
www.redeye.com