The Business Need
The company was receiving a decent level of Organic Search Traffic from its target states of California and Colorado, but the site was not converting organic traffic into leads. With a new Search Engine Optimization (SEO) program beginning, they recognized the need for the site to be optimized, not only to get more traffic but to also convert traffic better.
Converting SEO traffic was very important because it was the clients main source of traffic, and is typically the best quality traffic. For their target demographic (Generation X and Younger & Older Boomers), Search Engines are the #1 way they reach websites.
Challenges
Just weeks into its website conversion optimization program, the client decided to change the company it outsourced web development to, and changed internal contacts twice before deciding to change content management systems from Joomla to WordPress. Due to all this change, conversion rate optimization recommendations had to be limited to content and imagery changes. No site templates could be modified.
Solution
From our standardized set-up process, Conversion Team analysts immediately recognized many of the obstacles that users faced in their site experience, and quickly issued recommendations around the following:
- Navigation Cues
- Trust Factors (Elements that lead visitors to trust the site such as BBB badges, etc)
- Call to Action Buttons
- Content Readability
In response to the client's need and request, Conversion Team issued an extra amount of initial recommendations that could be implemented immediately to improve the website lead conversion rate in three steps:
Step 1
Conversion Team analysts delivered detailed requirements for each recommendation.
Step 2
The team met with company stakeholders, web development resources to explain each recommendation in detail, and to plan implementation.
Step 3
Conversion Team's Analysts supported the clients web development resources in implementing the recommendations.
Results
Conversion Rates
Due to its Website Conversion Rate Optimization Program, the client saw major success in converting more organic search engine traffic and return visitors*.
Organic Search Conversion Rate Increase: 167%
With organic search results being the major source of traffic for the website, this is where our Analysts placed this attention initially, not only for first-time visitors but also for return visitors using Google search to get back to the site.
Return Visitor Conversion Rate Increase: 74%
Due to the excellent design of the website, people interested in solar energy often looked at the site quickly to qualify the site with the intention to return later and make their decisions, which is typical behavior for such complex and significant purchases.
Upon returning to the site as a "qualified visitor" showing higher intentions and in the later stages of their decision process, users rarely became leads. As a result of "late-stage analysis" and recommendations made and implemented, return visitors now are 242% more likely to request a quote for solar than before.
- Conversion Rate BEFORE: 0.89%
- Conversion Rate AFTER: 1.56%
New Visitor Conversion Rate Increase: 72%
New Visitors to the site also started to convert at a higher rate. This happened separately from the increase in conversion rate for return users, as a result of navigational recommendations.
- Conversion Rate BEFORE: 1.65%
- Conversion Rate AFTER: 2.85%
Overall Conversion Rate Increase: 63%
The overall conversion rate when volatile and low-quality traffic was removed increased by 62%. Most of this increase can be attributed to increases in converting natural search traffic and return visitors. However, significant conversion rate increases were also seen for new visitors.
- Conversion Rate BEFORE: 1.41%
- Conversion Rate AFTER: 2.30%
Return Visitors
Not only did return visitors to the site start converting better, but people were 67% more likely to come back to the site after visiting.
* All statistics were pulled from Google Analytics, filtering out volatile and low-quality traffic for a period from Dec 2010 to Jan 17 2011 to the same date range a year later.
