There's an old joke about a man who was seen crawling around on his hands and knees on the curb one night, apparently looking for something. A policeman happened to walk by and see him.
“What are you doing?” the policeman asked.
“I’m looking for a watch that I lost,” the man responded.
“Well, where exactly did you lose it?” the policeman asked.
“Oh, about two blocks from here,” the man answered.
Puzzled, the policeman responded, “Then why are you looking over here?”
The man looked up and said, “Well, the light is better here!”
I thought of this joke recently when I was speaking with a client regarding which metrics on his Web site were important to him versus which metrics were most important to measure.
We’ve all seen the situation before when we measure the number of clicks on a pay-per-click advertisement when what we really care about is how many of those visitors actually converted on the site.
Another misguided measurement is tracking the open rate of an e-mail campaign when what really should be tracked is the number of people who clicked on the offer and then followed through with the promotion. Perhaps due to a combination of the wrong tools, we wind up measuring the wrong things.
And measuring Web metrics is just one small piece of the Web page puzzle. Once marketers know what is important to measure and track, the next crucial piece is for them to understand how different Web designs affect Web page visitors, and what changes can be made to increase conversion.
There are some overarching themes in Web design that have been found to successfully increase conversion across the board. These tips and tricks, combined with measuring the appropriate metrics, all lead to a successful Web site.
This phenomenon happens in Web site optimization as well. Everyone can measure the click of a mouse, but is that really what’s important? Do mouse clicks determine the impact of sales for an online business? It’s possible — but it’s probably more likely that there are downstream online metrics, or even offline metrics, that are the most direct drivers of your business. Certainly many benefits can be approximated — if I get a certain number of leads, I can make the assumption that I will convert “offline” the same historical percentage of those leads. Yet, when it comes down to it, maximizing leads is great, but maximizing sales is better.
Very often marketers have multiple metrics that they care about. For example, they might want to maximize sales but not decrease average order size. They might want to increase the number of people clicking on a banner advertisement, but also increase registration sign-ups simultaneously.
Another thing to take into consideration is that their success could be from a composite of many metrics, including both online and offline success events.
To truly optimize your online marketing, you need to make clear what is driving your company’s success and get as close to those drivers as possible. Also, you need to make sure your optimization solution has the flexibility and sophistication to manage these multiple success events and to link with your existing offline systems, such as a call center or CRM system.
