If you are a brand that has done some interactive marketing and aren’t satisfied with the conversion rate you’ve been getting, what can be done to help you attain conversion success?

First, take a step back from your conversion page and take a look at your interactive marketing campaign.  Has it been designed and executed properly?  Are there any tweaks or modifications that can be made to the existing campaign to better its chances to drive user conversion?  If there are any flaws in the program, this can hurt your chances at achieving conversion success.  So making any necessary corrections can benefit your conversion rate.

The degree to which your conversion rate will improve will vary.  Interactive marketing that is riddled with flaws can receive a significant spike in its success rate when it gets an overhaul, but a campaign that is already operating at nearly peak efficiency may only receive a percent of improvement after minor changes to work out its kinks are made.  The right adjustments will lead to a conversion rate improvement, but depending on how well the campaign was working to begin with determines whether these corrections will lead to subtle or dramatic increases in conversion rate. (more…)

When we work with a client as they get ready to launch their interactive marketing campaign, we always try to make sure that their conversion rate expectations are aren’t out of sync with the likely response their efforts will receive from their target consumers.  To help determine this ideal rate, there are a few steps we take to help make sure we identify the factors that influence how many conversions the campaign will actually receive.

First, we need to determine who makes up the brand’s target demographic and then dissect them to fully understand who they are, what interests them, and what their behavioral habits are.  For example, we try to determine when these users go online the most.  Do they go online while at work or are they predominantly online in the evening or on weekends?  How long do they stay online?  What are their interests or hobbies?  To gather and process all of this varied data, we use a range of analytical tools.  We also check out the social media space to find out what the target demographic is talking about.  All this research helps us get a good sense of the nature and makeup of the brand’s target consumer base and what might motivate them the most to perform the desired conversion, be it making a purchase to providing their e-mail information.

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Join Lori Druen and Scott Million as they discuss how to define conversion points based on client goals, and how to develop campaigns aimed at hitting those defined conversion points.

 LeapCast 11.19.2008: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This quarter, we’re talking a lot about conversion.  Landing pages are one invaluable tool for improving conversion rate, but within each landing page you need to determine the best messaging, layout, and calls to action to optimize conversions.  This determination is made by testing, testing, and more testing.

There are two main options for testing: A/B split and Multivariate.  A/B split testing allows you to test two versions of a single element on a page (like two different images).  While extremely effective, A/B split testing can require a significant amount of time to optimize all elements of a page (since you can only look at one element at a time).  Unlike traditional A/B split testing, multivariate testing allows for simultaneous testing of many varied elements within a landing page.  This can provide for much faster optimization by analyzing the best combination.

Multivariate testing can be a significant undertaking.  Specialized software is required to track the results of all of the variations and serve the right mix of content to determine the best performing.  In addition to the software, page coding becomes more involved, as pages need to be integrated with the software and all variations of content need to be populated.

Despite the requirements and challenges, the use of multivariate testing is on the rise for two reasons: it works, and it works faster.  There is simply no faster or more effective way of optimizing landing pages for the best results.