Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) brings together business intelligence, market research and AB/ Multivariate Testing to improve the performance of websites.
About the author: @tombowdenCRO is the Head of Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) and User Experience (UX) here at HP Group. He is an avid beard grower and enjoys shooting the Highest Paid Person’s Opinion and making websites easier to use. His portfolio of work includes Sony, Motorola, Denby, Safestore, Haart and Secondlife.
CRO Tutorials #3 – Don’t Waste Money Online! Use The Simple Spreadsheet
It was John Wanamaker that said, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”
Hands up if you spend your days with the niggling feeling of worry that if your bosses ask you how it’s going you’re not really going to be able to give them a very accurate report ?
This is a day to day problem that everyone in marketing faces. How can you be sure that the budget that you spend is working and how can you safeguard against wasting money in the future?
Fernando Torres - At £50million was he a Waste of Money?
The Simple Spreadsheet is a start….
Step 1
Write down every channel that you could possibly get traffic/ money through. For example:
- Direct
- Google Organic Non-Brand
- Google Organic Brand
- Google Paid Non-Brand
- Google Paid Brand
- Google Maps
- Google Products
- Bing Organic Non-Brand
- Bing Organic Brand
- Bing Paid Non-Brand
- Bing Paid Brand
- Yahoo! Organic Non-Brand
- Yahoo! Organic Brand
- Yahoo! Paid Non-Brand
- Yahoo! Paid Brand
- Facebook Paid
- Facebook Non-Paid
- Amazon
- Ebay
- Telephone
Step 2
Add each of these channels to a spread sheet.
Create two different sheets for these; one for Traffic and one for Revenue.
Then add data for this year and the previous year and calculate year on year percentage difference:
Simple Spreadsheet - it's simple!
Step 3
Bask in the glory of knowing what is doing well and what isn’t by using the Year on Year row as an indicator of relative success.
For example. Below you can see that direct is the problem:
It's still simple but it's getting really juicy now!
Step 4 (Optional)
Break each channel out and get more granular. For example within the Google Organic Non-Brand HP Group would probably look at the following keyword groups in more detail:
Google Organic Non-Brand
SEO Keywords
PPC Keywords
CRO Keywords
Social Media Keywords
Search Engine Marketing Keywords
Etc etc etc
You will then be able to track what is going on and ensure that you are not missing any big opportunities!
Please share this post if you think others may benefit and if you are on twitter follow @tombowdenCRO
If you’d like to improve the conversion rate of your website please contact Tom Bowden Head of CRO tom.bowden@hp-group.co.uk. Prices start from £500pm and we achieve on average a 15% improvement in conversion rate. Calculate what that would mean to you here: Website Conversion Rate Calculator.
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