Turning Clicks Into Cash
February 25, 2009 by Adam
Rawnet were features in this months .NET magazine with an article on how web agencies can change their pitching and project processes to help improve conversion rates.
The Full .NET Article
A website holds the key to how a company is perceived and in many cases, a company’s website has a major influence on whether a visitor ends up dealing with you or a competitor. The image your website projects is critical but so many companies continue to fall short. Adam Smith, managing director of digital consultancy Rawnet analyses what brands are doing wrong, and the role the web design agency pitch process plays.
Our 2008 Online Conversion Report, which polled the views of 1,962 UK adults, found that 78 per cent have been put off from dealing with a company because of poor process and usability on its website. That’s quite a damning figure considering everything that we know about designing and building websites, and in a society where 86 per cent of us have researched a company online before choosing whether or not to use them, you’d think brands would be doing a better job.
But that’s only scratching the surface; the issue of making consumers look too hard to find the information continues. All in all, almost a third of consumers believe it’s rare to find a website that’s really well designed and easy to use, while really spectacular and creative websites are usually difficult to use according to a further one in five consumers. There seems to be a growing gap between websites that are usable, and websites that are really creative and a joy to use. This gap doesn’t need to exist, and while customers are crying out for it to be filled, companies are spending far too much money on generating traffic, and not enough on actually creating a website that works.
The average conversion rate is just 2.3% - that's a lot of money and clicks wasted.
It's really puzzling when websites with large TV advertising budgets do not have similarly impressive websites. It is hard to believe that so much money is being spent on getting people to sites that does a really good job of leaving most visitors totally confused.
However, doubling the effectiveness of the website could half the marketing spend. Online advertising spending leapt over the £3bn level for the first time in the UK last year. With the average Conversion Rate of websites a disappointing 2.3%, that’s a lot of money and clicks wasted.
Challenge perceptions
So where is it all going wrong? And where does a web agency’s experience and expertise seem to go between being hired, and the end product going live? Well in many cases the pitch process ends up stifling agencies’ and developers’ ability to create a usable site. Too often we find ourselves feeling held back by the client’s preconceptions of what they think their audience want. It’s a sad fact, but I’m more likely to win a pitch if I go in ‘safe’, hoping the client will be more open to ideas during the project process. Agencies can bring the benefit of thinking through the mind of the user, and let their creativity really serve the benefits of both the brand and consumer.
The final website is a joint effort, and joint responsibility between the client and the agency. Whether a traditional agency, or an internal web department, their responsibilities are the same. It’s the agency’s job to challenge the client and design the website for the client’s customers. Often what the client thinks is great design, or a must-have technical feature isn’t necessarily great for the end user or the site’s usability. The easy route, of course, is to take all the feedback on board without question, but it could dramatically impact the project’s success.
Too often companies end up losing out on potential business because their web agency hasn’t challenged their ideas enough, focused too much on pleasing the client. It can reflect dramatically in the bottom line. Companies spend millions on search engine marketing, yet fall at the next hurdle in failing to convert visitors into business – web conversion is unnecessarily low, only two per cent of consumers claim to always end up dealing with the company whose link they clicked first on the search engine.
Make my logo bigger..
..A common request from clients - but a decent agency won't say 'how big?', they'd ask why - what's in it for the user? Are they more likely to get in touch? Or have we just hindered the usability by having to shrink the menu to make way for a kingsize logo? Unfortunately, during the pitching process most clients will be looking to see if the agency has understood their brand, and not what will benefit the user's experience of the site. It’s the agency’s role to reign in the client if required and while the client may understand its brand and clients better, the agency will have much more experience and knowledge in usability – and that, after all is what they are buying, the value an agency’s experience can add.
The brief is a spring board, and agencies should not be afraid to challenge ideas within a pitching process. The most successful projects come from when the client and agency trust each other, and trust can only be gained from being confident, knowing your stuff and producing results.
