6 Ways to Maximize Web Conversions

Maximize your online conversions by using your traffic profile as a strategic guide.

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Putting the right call-to-action (CTA) in the right place can make all the difference in website conversions. The problem is that many digital marketers choose web CTAs based upon internal needs, industry standards, or other reasons that are largely irrelevant to optimizing for web conversions. When optimizing for online conversions, it is best to maximize what you have to work with rather than use a strategy that is based on other needs. Organizations that work with what they are given will almost always maximize web conversions.

Your Traffic Profile

Your organization's web traffic profile is the mix of sources that send visitors to your website. Common sources include:

- Search Engines

- Referrals

- Earned Media

- Social Media

- E-mail

- Paid Advertising

Any digital marketing team worth their salt knows the exact mix and percentages of the online sources that make up their traffic profile. Many marketing teams optimize for this mix, but many others fall into the trap of pleasing management, following competitors, or adhering to industry trends.

Traffic Profile Strategies

Organizations should prioritize CTAs based on the unique mix of traffic sources. Here are a few ways that your organization can optimize for top traffic sources.

1. Search Engines

Search traffic can be very general or specific depending on the keyword mix that is sending traffic.

Branded keywords: These users already know about your brand. This means that you can place CTAs that are in the middle of the funnel (MOFU), which is more specific about your brand's offer and company.

Non-branded keywords: These users are most likely to be new to your brand, or are considering your company among other choices. Place CTAs that are closer to the top of the funnel (TOFU), as these offers are more general about your industry. You can't expect to win using bottom of the funnel (BOFU) CTAs like free analysis or buy-now offers with users that don't already know about your brand.

2. Referral Traffic

It depends on the source, but referrals are typically MOFU offers since referrals for most organizations come from partner or industry websites. Partner referrals come with a high level of trust and these visitors are most likely already familiar with your brand. Therefore, MOFU offers should be considered.

3. Earned Media

Robust earned media campaigns send referral traffic from trusted industry news websites, social media and search. These include visitors that click on links in news articles, social media, or the blogosphere. Even though these visitors are familiar with your industry, it is best to keep a TOFU focus on offers until these visitors spend more time on your website learning about your brand. However, earned media placements on partner websites could be well served by MOFU offers since these visitors are more familiar with your brand and come with a high level of trust.

4. Social Media

It depends on the source, but typically social media visitors have already been introduced to your brand. Visitors from 'owned' social media properties, like your brand's Twitter account, definitely deserve MOFU content. However, visitors from other social media accounts not owned by your brand may not know about your brand. Therefore, this traffic should be approached with TOFU content.

5. E-mail

Email offers should have their own CTAs optimized for each user relative to their lead score, so it is pretty much impossible to assign a broad strategy here. If you found this last sentence as confusing as a Chinese newspaper, then you are probably using an antiquated email marketing strategy that blasts your entire email list with the same offer. If that is the case, then I suggest you adopt a marketing automation strategy immediately.

6. Paid Advertising

Considering the high cost and low margins from paid ads, most organizations only pay for keywords or ads that convert directly to sales. Therefore, it is absolutely crucial to use BOFU offers with most paid ads. Using TOFU or MOFU content here would undermine the ability to provide a quick sale from paid advertising.

Putting It All Together

This strategy is not a site-wide effort. At least the top 10 performing pages on your website, as well as all landing pages, should have a specific strategy based on the relative amounts of each traffic source that is unique to that page. It is also important to note that the strategies above are simply starting points. Any great conversion strategy constantly tests and measures various offers. By measuring your traffic profile and prioritizing CTAs, your organization can get a head start on increasing website conversions.

Aaron Aders is co-founder and chief strategy officer of Indianapolis-based Slingshot SEO, a national leader in online marketing, planning, and execution. Aders steers the strategic vision behind software and business processes. @SlingshotSEO