How We Increased Conversions By 130% With Iterative Testing

Increasing conversions is one of the most common challenges digital marketing agencies have to deal with. In this how-to article, we will provide you with tried and proven hints on how to considerably raise the number of goal achievements per visitor. To put it simple, we offer doing iterative testing to improve the landing pages and, therefore, grow conversions. To illustrate the effectiveness of such an approach we provide data derived from one of our case studies.

Hint #1: Optimize Landing Pages

Before starting any other marketing activities, it makes sense to complete a landing page optimization or else you may lose qualitative, money-leading traffic. You need one if something mentioned below is true for the website under examination:

• The landing page is long and has only one contact (request) form at the bottom.
  
• Call-to-action buttons do not clearly explain the value a client gets.
  
• A product/service description is too long.
  
• Product/service benefits are not highlighted.

One of the solutions is to create a few landing page variations, test them for a determined period of time, evaluate the performance of every page, and then select the best performing variation.

While re-redesigning, it is important to aim for the following:

• Your header is a fast-catch.
  
• Your contacts are easy to find, e.g. a contact form/phone number/messenger pop-up is shown permanently.
  
• The benefits, tips, helpful solutions, and other competitive advantages are highlighted.
  
• Call to action is clear and simple.
  
• The mobile version works appropriately.

Hint 2: Apply Correct AdWords Account Settings

To reach the desired KPIs, you need to measure your efforts correctly, so keep the following in mind. If an AdWords account is used for a while, it is likely that it can and should be optimized. Possible actions may include:

• Structuring the account, e.g. creating separate product categories to make the data compatible.
  
• Identifying the most relevant keywords that generate conversions for a lower cost per action and updating the SEO strategy.
  
• Using all available AdWords extensions to improve the campaign performance.
  
• Revising the content for ads, banners, embedded social media, etc. and improving it, keeping the KPIs in mind.
  
• Applying AdWords filters, e.g. including all the negative keywords, excluding non-relevant traffic, cleaning your data out of spam, and so on.

Good advice on how to get better data in Google Analytics can be found here. (6 Pieces of Advice for Getting Better Data in Google Analytics)

Hint 3: Test Ad Rotation And Targeting Methods

Measuring the test results requires the skills and time of a dedicated team member. The parameters to pay close attention to may be the following:

1. Cost per click,
   
2. Average position of the ad,
   
3. Number of clicks converted into leads,
   
4. Cost of lead acquisition.

In terms of increasing conversions, the third parameter seems to be the most important one. However, the others play their role in the success of the campaign as well. Obviously, the cost per click should not grow, the average position of the ad should improve, and the cost of lead acquisition should reduce. Otherwise, your campaign may be more costly than you estimated.

Case Study: Increasing Conversions On The Website Of The Software Provider

Let us give you an example on how to increase conversion rates utilizing the aforementioned suggestions.

It is always interesting to launch a digital marketing campaign for a service provider. We worked with the company X that sold software packages aimed to power automated call management and outbound dialling designed to help increase productivity.

The challenge was to promote the site to ensure a large amount of new visitors. The marketing team was asked to attract new potential customers at a cost effective price for the business, which was supposed to be harder in a B2B niche.

After the site’s audit, our project team ran the 3-month ad rotation with old landing page and new variations. We obtained the following data as compared with the previous period:

After the changes were made according to the hints mentioned above, we checked the site’s performance and received these results:

So, the conversion rate was improved by almost 130%. As a result, the best-converting landing page was selected and left active in the Google AdWords account. The statistics showed that the cost/converted click change reduced by almost 230% (for more details check the full case study here).

This means that iterative testing and optimizing of landing pages works well for increasing the conversion rate. It is also an effective method when used along with other tools (see the example here). However, the success rate may, of course, vary.