As COVID-19 shows no sign of slowing down, many businesses are going back to the drawing board to figure out how to continue operating in the new norm. The digital funnel sphere is getting even more crowded due to all businesses being forced to move their operations & customer engagements to virtual.
We’re now seeing a spike in companies’ updating their websites, interests in SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and marketing tools/techniques, and social media activities. Keep in mind that companies are not only transferring their current funnel activities to digital but also improving the digital funnel engagements beyond their current capabilities. You need to have more real-life-like content and even better analytics to adapt to the new environment. Large companies, who used to spend 50-60% of their marketing budgets on live events, are now focusing their spending on digital.
In this economic atmosphere, you cannot afford any waste. Every visit to your site should result in desired behaviours. Globally, the e-commerce websites’ quarterly conversion rate has steadily been at around 2.6%. Right now, most companies are focused on making their landing pages intriguing enough for people to go beyond simple browsing.
If you already have steady flow into the top of your funnel but have trouble seeing the inflows turned into sales, you want to focus on your conversion rate optimisation (CRO) techniques.
What is conversion rate optimisation (CRO)?
If you CRO is a process which enables users to take actions when they visit a website. Typically, the focus is on optimising the landing pages. The landing pages are where the users first lay eyes on the expression of your brand and services. Driving the users to click the links they see and be incentivised to further explore the site are the most common CRO efforts.
Given the required optimisation pace to stay competitive, CRO cannot be a manual process. You’d need to run constant A/B testing to find the best landing page and website UX based on user behaviours.
This is why companies are relying on solutions such as Convincely to improve funnel conversion without increasing ad expenditures. One of Convincely’s clients, Members Own Health Funds, saw 340% increase in quality leads and 102 % increase in sales by using Convincely. When the funnel experience is solidified, the ROI on your marketing dollars becomes higher and higher.
Scaling funnel requires beyond CRO
Just like anything else, there is no silver bullet that can magically strengthen your sales performance. So CRO alone will not be sufficient to scale your funnel in a sustainable manner. User engagement on your website is a two-way communication method. As you improve the website UX, you need to ensure you are getting the right insights about not only the landing page but about your service / value proposition in general.
These insights could also come from customer surveys, customer service interactions, focus groups, etc. Regardless of the source, your testing approach and solutions must be based on the collected quantitative and qualitative data. Hence, Convincely does not just offer a software. It also provides a team of people to investigate your platform functionalities and learn more about the customers your product targets before forming the hypotheses to test.
The hypotheses must be formed carefully and objectively. This process will dictate which marketing tactics and channels will be utilised. Once you have educated hypotheses, you can update the website content and format to see which combination captivates the attention of your customers most effectively.
Improving your search relevance
Right now, the competition for online relevance is fiercer than ever. You must make sure that your brand is prevalent where your target users are and your brand is there before your competitors.
There are a few things that will impact your relevance ranking – keywords, links, content update frequency, and meta description tags. Companies who do this successfully are deliberate about when and where their brand names are visible. This is why sites such as AnswerThePublic and BuzzSumo are popular as they help companies track what their target customers are searching online. Brands have to think beyond the brand-customer relationship and understand the needs of their customers more holistically in order to identify where in their user journeys their brand presence will make the most impact. Having a covid19-proof funnel process requires having the most up-to-date knowledge of your users’ needs and interests at all times. Thus, the smartest investment to make right now is in tools that will help you expand such knowledge.
