Make us Visible are one of new trusted partners for the The Family Business Network. David and Adele Hamer are a family business based in South Lakes with extensive experience of working with family business clients in a wide variety of industries.  They can handle everything from complete website design to ongoing digital marketing.

“We get a buzz from working together to optimise your digital strategy and make you visible online.”

David & Adele Hamer.

Is Your Website Working For You – And How Do You Know?

For some businesses, owning a website is simply a means of having an online presence.  For others it is critical to revenue or lead generation. How much you depend on your digital marketing will determine how important the underlying statistics are to your growth strategy.

We speak to businesses on a weekly basis, who are often shocked when they read some basis statistics about their site, and how it is performing.

Before getting into the nuts and bolts, there are a few basic metrics to understand, both in terms of their importance, and what they mean.

Conversion – A conversion will differ from business to business.  For a solicitor, a conversion might be an enquiry via the website from a potential new client. For an ecommerce website, a conversion will be a customer order.

Conversion Rate – eg 5%.  For every 100 visitors, how many convert into a Conversion.

Cost Per Conversion – The total cost of marketing your website per month, divided by the number of enquiries it generates.  Eg £1,000 / 20 enquiries = £50 cost per conversion.

Every business has different markups and margins, so you should therefore understand what these are before you can establish what an acceptable cost per conversion is.

The Data

In order to be able to understand your conversion rates, you should at the very least have Google Analytics setup on your website, with conversion goals in place.  Put simply, these conversion goals allow google analytics to track a conversion. E.g a sale on your website, or an enquiry form being filled in.

You may need to get a coder to setup your conversion goals, but it will be money well spent.

Once this is set up you can really start to dig into the data.

Leaking Budgets

We often look at Adwords campaigns which have been up and running for months, and sometimes years, only to find out that they are running at a loss, or are missing some very quick wins.

Some quick wins can often be gained by checking;

• See your conversion rate on mobile phones compared to tablets
• See your conversion rates of different age groups
• Compare conversion rate of Twitter to Facebook
• Compare conversion rate of different campaigns within your Adwords account

The solution can often be to identify problems with your website which cause the reduced conversion rate, or to switch your budget to channels which are converting well.

What An Acceptable Conversion Rate & Cost

The outcomes from your website are specific to your business.  For example, a business generating leads for over £100k, may be happy to spend £100 per conversion.  However, a business selling £1 plastic watches, may only be willing to pay £0.20p per conversion.

Being realistic, and patient is a crucial aspect to any form of digital marketing.  Each industry will have a benchmark of sector average performance, which you will need to compete with. i.e

“If your competitors website is converting at 10%, and your’s converts at 5%, your marketing budget will need to be double theirs to compete”.
Expectations

Having realistic expectations is crucial to long term planning for any digital campaign.  Giving your agency short and long term goals, will help them to work out how to apportion your budget in order to generate a ROI.

Working with an unrealistic budget can often lead to a very short campaign, and unworkable relationship.  Be open with your margins, and work together to create a solid strategy.

In Summary

If your website is being used to generate new business, you should have a close handle on how well it is performing.  You cannot gauge this without having the proper tools in place, such as Google Analytics conversion tracking.

Keeping a close eye on these figures will allow you to stem the flow of any potentially unprofitable paid campaigns, and also allow you to identify possible problems with your website.
David Hamer

Make Us Visible | Websites | Social | Adwords | SEO | Google Partners

Phone: 015392 67315 |  Business Hours: 9am – 5pm Monday – Friday

Find Us @ http://www.makeusvisible.co.uk| Facebook | Twitter

Unit 4 Holker School, Cark In Cartmel, Cumbria, LA11 7PQ