In a SEO campaign after the rankings are achieved, the first and foremost question on the mind is how are the conversions? The website owner starts calculating the ROI (Return On Investment) , his main concern is - has the amount spent on SEO proving to be an investment or was it a huge expense made by the company.
This situation is the most critical juncture of the whole SEO campaign. A s the conversion ratio depends on many factors. SEO is about making the website rank high and get the targeted organic traffic to the website. Once this is done the SEO mission is accomplished. But the client is not only happy with the traffic, what he needs is business, the conversions from these visits.
If the visits are not getting converted in inquiries then the situation is like customers walk into the store check the display of the products and leave.
Let us take, a real time example : A person sees an attractive Signboard outside a store listing the products he wants to buy . He walks in. He checks the products which are displayed . Looks here and there to get answers for certain queries but there is no sales person in sight . He does not get the answers so he cannot decide, so he leaves.
The same situation arises online when a searcher comes across your website on the search engines , he clicks on your website link , browses the website but since he does not get enough information on the site maybe about prices, specification about the product or the details about the company, etc. which may be due to the fact that the information on the site is not enough or maybe due to the fact that the information is there but the navigation structure is not friendly enough or the design is to loud, cluttered or confusing to smoothly go through the whole process of buying online.
Its like your marketing staff has done a great job but your sales staff and staff on the counter in your store are not serious about business.
Hence, before coming to the conclusion that all this online business is just a hype created by the online marketing industry, analyse the situation and find answers for what can be the possibilities for low conversions.
Analyse the on-page Conversion Rate factors ( As the aspects of your landing page act as your sales staff) , as an on going process from the time your website goes live , every contact form data that you get from the website should be traced like a real time inquiry. Many times the loop-hole lies there. The email received from the website goes unanswered and the inquiry loses its value with time or the process gets initiated but the sale does not reach the closing stage due to some communication gap. As effective and timely communication is crucial to any sales process, whether it is real or virtual.
Hence, as real time sales team conversions are monitored, similarly the monitoring is required for every inquiry generated from the website.
Clicks as a result of PPC or SEO bring in the online customer on your online store but for conversions your landing page factors which is your virtual sales staff and payment counter is responsible for the successful completion of the sale.
The most important point to be kept in mind is that the virtual customer is usually impatient and info hungry and expects quick answers for every question. Hence he should get the information readily on the site or should get an immediate reply to his mail.
Secondly, a person who buys online checks out many other sites before taking a final decision so your site should be competitive enough as compared to other websites ranking high on the search engines.
The online competition many times may not be the same as real time competition. Hence studying the online competition and having the knowledge of the online market of the products that you deal in is again equally important.
