In SMB Online Marketing, What is a Conversion?

Unique visitors? KPI? Optimization? There are a lot of terms that get thrown around during any conversation about marketing, and it can get confusing fast. While each term has its time and place, there is one word that seems to be consistently misused or misunderstood, which is quite unfortunate considering its importance. The mystery surrounding conversion for non marketers often has to do with the lack of context around it in day-to-day chatter. “What’s your conversion rate?” is a tough question to answer if you don’t know what, or who, you are supposed to be converting. Not to mention how. In short, conversions relate to transforming traffic into sales, but it isn’t always a direct path.
What is a Conversion?
Conversions are often associated with sales, but it is certainly not the only time that they can be measured. A conversion could be something such as having a website visitor sign up for your newsletter or using your contact form. To measure conversions you would take overall traffic and divide it by the number of visitors who completed a certain action or task. For example, if you average 100 website visitors per day, and 10 sign up for your newsletter, your conversion rate would be 10 percent. Conversion rates can be measured per page on your site. Pages with high conversion rates are performing better than those with lower ones. This information can help you improve content to boost your conversions. More on that in a moment.
Conversion Pipeline Example
As mentioned, conversions aren’t always measured in sales. In this example, we can see how a website visitor is converted multiple times before they make a purchase.
-
A customer lands on your website and browses, they become a conversion when they...
-
Sign up for your newsletter. They are converted again when they...
-
Read the newsletter they receive via email. They are converted again when they...
-
Click on a call-to-action in the newsletter that takes them to your site. They convert again when they...
-
Purchase goods or services.
Improving Your Conversion Rate
With this pipeline in mind, which could have more or fewer steps between attracting a new visitor and landing a sale, let’s continue from above. We now that each time a customer takes a step toward a sale, they become a conversion. But, if you can get people to sign up for the newsletter and read it, but are seeing very few, if any, click throughs on the call to action, you have identified a problem spot in your conversion pipeline. Refining this area’s content or offering can help improve conversions that result in sales.
Conversions are critical in measuring marketing campaign health. As small business Internet marketing experts, the MORBiZ team is skilled at creating websites and other online content that maximizes conversions. We also provide detailed reports on our marketing efforts for your small or medium sized business to illustrate exactly how we are benefiting your bottom line. To learn more about how we utilize content, video, social media and other digital tools to turn traffic into sales, don’t hesitate to call us at 1-855-2MORBiZ (266-7249) or email us at sales@MORBiZ.com . Our experienced SMB digital marketers will work with you to create an online presence that will not be missed by any potential customers!









