Huge Increase in Search Traffic - Expected Drop in Conversions?
-
We've recently implemented a successful strategy whereby we've increased non-branded organic search traffic by over 50%. We started with our niche products and secured those rankings and then expanded the program to include local results. Rev is up, trans# is up, but conversion rate dropped.
Here is the question...is there an acceptable ratio between the percentage growth in visits and the percentage decrease in conversions?
-
I run a custom report in GA that looks at landing page by keyword and try to make some sense out of that. Do you have any better custom GA Reports? As far as your other points, they are all very valid and we've been considering them. I am a proponent of gaining insight through the customer voice - as long as it is not viewed as being intrusive.
Thanks in advance for your response.
-
I understand your point. We are not seeing that lateral spread - instead, we are seeing advancement in our product rankings. Say we were in jewelry, we would be seeing more traffic from "rose gold necklace" or "pearl ring" rather than "how to take care of pearl jewelry" or "what is the best length necklace". Similarly, we might rank for broad terms like "jewelry store" or "jewelry store + geo-modifier". To me, these would be very significant terms that could convert, and while it doesn't hurt to have them, what can/should we do to convert?
We've definitely looked at landing page modifications and moved product around to what we think customers would most like to see. We are definitely seeing a dip in conversions, but this could be a reflection of the economy, etc. What I'm curious to know is if a site sees a huge lift in visits, what's an acceptable drop in conversions?
Thanks in advance for your response.
-
Are you seeing specific pages instantly lose conversion, or is it a site wide estimation?
If it's a site wide issue, then I would take a look at the individual landing pages.
If you are targeting the right terms, my thought would be to start working on conversion testing. Here are a few thoughts:
- How aggressive is the marketing funnel? Is there re-targeting, shopping cart abandonment follow ups, etc.
-
Start surveying customers to find out why they are not buying
-
Proactive live chat
-
Is the call to action correct? Pricing? Value Added Benefits?
If it's just one specific page that all the sudden magically seems like it lost the conversion once you started plowing traffic to it...Then, I would start to try and figure out "what is the difference between the keywords"? There must be a different customer intent, or a different type of customer coming to the page if it all of a sudden starts tanking.
-
-
That basically describes what we've done - we've taken our retail site and really fine-tuned the icon/niche products and secured #1 placement for most of those terms. We have not pursued the article/blogging avenue as of yet, but we expect to be successful in that venture. If we do as suggested, we expect to drive even more traffic from words that wouldn't fit in our current ecommerce setup...but wouldn't that contribute to an even lower conversion rate? At the end of the day, the "bankers" are interested in the money in the bank and not the number of visitors that came through.
So here is the dilemma - I look at the keywords and they are all what I consider to have high potential - but they are simply not delivering. The other issue I have is that we are driving a significantly higher amount of traffic as a result of this campaign to our store locations page, but I can't tell how many of these customers go into one of our 30+ locations (I am assuming a significant amount). Our local search efforts really have helped us in this endeavor - but without proof of the results, there are challenges to justifying the time an
So what we've done is in effect expanded our net with highly relevant keywords, but we don't know why they are not buying or if they are buying at one of our locations.
We don't know if the most effective approach would be to bring on a survey partner or seek advice from a conversion expert.
Any thoughts?
-
I think EGOL pretty much hit it on the head. You need to figure out the intent of the terms you have. If you break down the typical customer buying process:
- **Awareness. **Your potential customers don’t know you exist. You need to reach them with your brand to get their consideration.
- **Interest. **Your prospects are aware of you and might be receptive to your offers and ads.
- **Research. **Potential customers not only know you exist but have shown an interest in learning more about you.
- **Buying. **These people have a good idea about you and have browsed around to figure out exactly what they want. They are ready to buy buy buy!
Say your niche product is "mountain bikes". If you are seeing an uptick in terms like "how to ride a mountain bike", "riding mountain bikes", "fixing mountain bikes", "fastest mountain bike racing times", you should expect to see a smaller conversion rate - assuming you are selling a product. These wouldn't be considered "buying" terms. Same thing as "mountain bike reviews" - that's more of a 'research' term.
If your goal is to collect email addresses, then maybe your 'sell' on why they should give you their email address doesn't make sense for the terms.
If you are seeing a dip in conversions, I would take a look at the highest trafficked terms that are not converting and see if there are other ways to 'make' them convert. Landing page modification here would be key.
-
Here is the question...is there an acceptable ration between the percentage growth in visits and the percentage decrease in conversions?
I have found that ratio to be highly variable. For example, you start out with a retail site that tightly targets the products that you sell. Then you branch into articles that inform people how to use those products. This free content can attract a lot of visitors who are looking for information. However, these people may have already purchased or are considering the purchase. Perhaps they are even long tail keyword visitors with queries that are unrelated to a purchase.
So, the conversion rate can really fall.
What I try to do is to develop a different type of conversion. Such as identifying pages that pull lots of nonconverting traffic and placing adsense on those pages and house ads for your own products.
If you sell at a good discount this can really be effective because the visitor sees your kickass price... then visits your advertising competitor who sells higher... so visitor comes back to you for the purchase. That way you make the sale and take a piece of the competitors advertising budget.
Ads don't hurt my sales much at all and are easier money.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How does Shopify attribute conversions?
I'm trying to resolve a number of conversion discrepancies found in Google Analytics. I discovered that Shopify also provides its own 'conversion details'. In some cases they correlate, which is awesome! But in many cases they do not. Anyone know why this is? And which is more reliable (remembering that Shopify is an actual, real order)? Does anybody know how Shopify attributes conversions (ie. last click, first click, or some hybrid of the two)?
Conversion Rate Optimization | | muzzmoz0 -
Please can anyone recommend any GOOD 'TRAFFIC BUYING COMPANIES ?
Hi Guys I really need some help here I am looking for some good traffic buying companies where we can buy traffic from that can will help us to generate leads from our own website. We want to 'buy traffic' that is targeted and generate leads from our website. We are running Google ad words but it is now becoming more and more expensive to run! Please can anyone recommend any good companies ? Thanks Gareth
Conversion Rate Optimization | | GAZ090 -
Time spent downloading a page increased drasticly
Hi Guys, We have found increased "Time spend downloading a page" drastically. Our website: www.learnenglishindublin.com Our company is located in Ireland, so we moved our servers from US to Ireland at the beginning of December. Also before increasing 'Time spend downloading a page" I did: I have installed plugins JCH Optimize (plugin is optimizing CSS and Javascripts [merging them]) I have installed ScriptsDown - which is moving all scripts to bottom of site. Pingdom tools shows that site is loading average of 2.7 secs. Pages are cached. Gzip is used. Our SEO rankings dropped from 1 page to 2 page. We have gone up in Google Maps search. Image sizes are about 1.7MB Any idea how things have actually gotten worse after this “improvement”? Thanks, Olivia increased.jpg
Conversion Rate Optimization | | Olivia_led0 -
Create better conversion at checkout?
I'm getting extremely poor conversion rates at checkout..would like to hear some ideas to increase checkout. Last month we had 60 users who added to cart, and only 7 who converted. We offer merchant CC, PayPal, and GCO, so I don't believe payment options is the reason for the exit. Any ideas?
Conversion Rate Optimization | | William.Lau0 -
Non-branded search before branded search in Google Analytics
A lot of organic search phrases contain branded terms. Does Google Analytics provide a possibility to track wheteher the first interactor with the website is due to a non-branded search term? Example: On monday someone search for 'online shoes' and on thursday this visitor search for 'shoestore.com'. Ist it possible in the Thursday report in Google Analytics to see that this visitor has first arrived on the site with the search term 'online shoes'? The same question can be asked for direct/none traffic. is it possible to see whether these visits ca be attributed to an organic search term?
Conversion Rate Optimization | | xicero0 -
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO): Best Approach/Plan Documentation
Hey Mozzers - First off, I am well aware of what CRO is, its benefits, and why it is essential for any inbound or performance marketing campaigns. However i am a total newbie at the actual planning and implementation of CRO, so any advice/feedback on the questions below are much appreciated! When planning a CRO experiment/test what is the best way to document it? Should i develop the full plan ahead of time laying out each element? If so, what elements should i include in this plan? What are the KPIs i should report on? What tools should i use for reporting (i was thinking a blend of Google and Clicktale)? Any lessons learned through out your campaigns? Thank you all so much for your input! Regards - Kyle
Conversion Rate Optimization | | kchandler0 -
How to track PPC conversions?
I use both adwords and Microsoft Adcenter. I am looking to be able to track my conversions from each PPC site. I do not have a "Thank You" or "Check Out" page that I can tag because any sales that I make are through clicks on a link that goes offsite to an affiliate company that I receive commission from. However, the link on my site is a "Buy Now" button, so to get some idea of which source is giving me better conversions I'd like to know whether adcenter or adwords is sending more people that end up clicking this link. Canb anyone suggest a way or a program to set up in this manner? Thanks in advance for your help!
Conversion Rate Optimization | | VictorVC0 -
Conversion Software
Can someone please suggest a conversion software other than omniture that I can used to track the amount of revenue a specific keyword is bringing into my company? Is there a way that I can do this using Google Analytics? I know in omniture there is a feature that shows you what the specific keyword is bringing in x amount of dollars. Can you guys recommend any other software that can do this?
Conversion Rate Optimization | | TSpike10