I Need More Website Traffic. STOP. It's Conversion Time.

The Meat is in the Analytics.

I love the agency life! In fact, it is my life. It's the life I've known for the last 14 years. What I am most proud of though is that we've built up two agencies that pride themselves on being data drive, lead driven, performance driven agencies, "without the fluff".

My goal has always been to try to open up the minds of our clients and outsource agency partners, to remove the fluff, and to bring in data driven performance marketing. There are, however, a couple of stigmas attached to agencies and the way they've traditionally worked. One of these is "selling fluff" i.e. the incorrect way of selling or upselling digital (especially when the data tells you otherwise).

The absolute worst line that I hear all the time is, "Steve, in order for you to get more sales, you need more traffic. The solution is so 'SIMPLE' - give us more budget for paid media & we'll get you another 20,000 visitors a month. Don't worry, it's audience-based targeting, with interests and likes. We'll create lookalike audiences so that we are learning gradually. Within no time, your sales will skyrocket." See "Paid media is dying."

This simple example should raise a couple of questions in your mind as an AM or as a client:

1. How do I get all my conversion rates to 15%?
2. Why does my organic SEO channel convert the highest?
3. What am I spending on paid vs organic vs above the line vs social?
4. Does my spend result in the ROI that I'm hoping to achieve?
5. What am I doing to try to improve conversion rates?

A simple visual representation below can demonstrate the kind of data that I'm referring to.

Channel	Visits	Website Conversion Rate	Sales	Average Order	Revenue
Direct	10000	12%	1200	R350	R420 000
Organic	10000	15%	1500	R350	R525 000
Paid	10000	8%	800	R350	R280 000
Social	10000	3%	300	R350	R105 000

I believe it's time to put a STOP to account managers selling traffic and media without looking at conversion rates and using this to aid their sales process. I believe it's time to START selling conversion rate optimisation to companies. It's then time for AM's & agencies to CONTINUE using analytics to make better decisions about how to increase sales.

So Where Do I Start with this Conversion Rate Thingy?

Well, based on the data we're looking at in the above analytics table, and when you're looking at website conversion rates, the best place to start is with your website.

The manual check is:

1. Look at the conversion rate by channel over time
2. Look at desktop vs mobile conversion rates
3. Look at landing page conversion rates (home page vs category pages vs product pages vs blog pages)
4. Look at the day of the week
5. Look at the time of day

These 5 graphs should give you a really good picture of what's working and what's not. You can then do a bit of research on how or what needs to be improved. Google Analytics makes it really easy for users and account managers to understand what they're looking at and making decisions off the back of the above reports will be relatively easy.

55.5% of companies plan to increase their CRO budget in 2022

Cost of Increasing Traffic Volumes vs. Cost of Conversion Rate Optimisation

This really depends on too many factors for me to even begin putting into words. However, what I can do is give you a reference to some great conversion rate optimisation AI tools out there that can change your life.

Better Annuity, More Sustainable Outcomes & Long-Term Thinking.

I think in closing, what we really need to start doing as agencies and AMs who are guiding our clients into making decisions and spending their cash is ensure we're making the right decisions.

1. Owning your platforms and being in control of the users that visit them is critical in this day and age. Not only critical but consider that we have absolute control of allowing them and giving them what they want once they land on our site.
2. Use the data you have to empower your clients and give them the right upsell, not just upsell for the sake of upsell.

Just think about it, If I offered you the chance to spend R100,000 a month to focus on doubling your website conversion rates from 2% to 4% OR spend R100,000 a month to get more visitors to the site staying at a conversion rate of 2%, with the chance that those rates would potentially start declining at first until we learned a bit more about those users, and then we could start improving that traffic quality, which will hopefully increase conversion rates. Which would you go for?

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