What Is Your Conversion Rate? Plus Two Other Metrics That Make It More Meaningful

Filed Under Online Marketing, Marketing Metrics | Leave a Comment

Posing this question to myself last week, brought me to a number of nuggets that I wanted to write down for reference and share.

Conversion rate is a percentage of your audience that was successfully “sold” to your message and engaged into a purchase to the overall audience that viewed your communications. Conversions come in various shapes: sales, leads, sign-ups for newsletters, information requests, linking to your site or blog, views of a certain page, downloads of a specific media material or referrals. In other words, it could be any action that you want your target audience to do as a response to your communications.

Conversion tracking becomes a very “magical” tool when you want to test the efficiency of your ads, copy or keywords in your online marketing initiatives. As an example: you can have 2 versions of an ad with a rate of 1.3% CTR (click-through) and 1.7%. If you just rely on the CTR, you will keep using the second version with a higher rate. However, even though more people clicked on the second ad, how many did actually register a purchase? This is answered by the conversion rate that might prove the opposite regarding the effectiveness of your ad. Perhaps the “catchy” headline in the first ad was very effective, but call-to-action copy failed to deliver. By having the conversion rate metric you can use the call-to-action copy from the second ad. And test.

You still need CTR! To calculate the profits you make from your ads. That’s where CPC (cost per click) comes in. Thus, you can see how much you spend relative to what you gain. But again, we are only using 2 metrics and can miss on the information. As an example, you might have an ad or a keyword with a lowest CTR and low CPC, but it can convert very well. Here you need to add another dimension - the amount of traffic which you can measure as well. How valuable all the traffic that this ad brings to your site? This way you need to calculate the profit each ad brings. To do so you need to calculate the total number of conversions (number of clicks multiplied by the conversion rate and divided by 100) and the value of a conversion (which you can assign (example your sale is $50 and you keep $30 after subtracting all the costs and fees, thus $30 is your conversion value). The value of a conversion helps you understand how much this action is worth for your business. The profit per ad = (conversion value X total number of conversions(profits)) - costs).

Presentation Matters! The Top Information Design Principles That You Need To Know

Filed Under Effective Communications, UI Design, Information Design | Leave a Comment

Communication is a vital skill that we developed and enhanced beyond the level that our counterparts in the animal world can currently rely on. However, we are still evolving and the amount of information we share rises every day. We are being trained or forced to perceive lots of complex information that we are to digest and to move on to the next batch.  So, it is almost critical to learn how to present yourself well, how to communicate your message effectively and how to make your information-based products  the ultimate delights for your customers.

The information you sell (be it a report or a dashboard of some sort) must be “pretty”, in other words, it should be quite visually appealing and well organized to make a difference for your users.  There is a fine line between the simplicity, enough information and information overload that you might want to test with your users.

“The danger of clutter - especially on a visual screen - is that it causes confusion that affects how well we perform tasks. To that end, visual clutter is a challenge for fighter pilots picking out a target, for people seeking important information in a user interface, and for web site and map designers, among others.” (MIT news).

To our luck, there is a whole discipline devoted to this question - Information Design that have to be a must read topic (and it is) for web application developers and product managers.  I find it very useful as well as a marketer and communicator.  In fact, anyone can benefit from this extra knowledge, or information to reduce the information overload we impose on our audiences.  According to Rune Pettersson, “Information Design is a multi-disciplinary, multi-dimensional, and worldwide consideration. It is not possible to develop a number of firm message design rules telling the information designer exactly how to best design a message and develop information materials. However, based on research it is possible to formulate several ID-principles and then develop a number of guidelines for the design of effective and efficient messages and information materials.”- International Institute for Information Design  So what are those top 10 or 16 ID-principles that we should keep in mind while engaging in product design or testing a product or participating in a beta?  You can actually find 150 ID-guidelines for 16 designs principles in Rune’s research, “It Depends“:

  1. Define the problem (Find what the user wants to achieve)

  2. Provide structure (Develop a clear structure, minimize the number of levels, show the  hierarchy graphically)

  3. Provide clarity (Go through the details: fonts, pictures, layouts, color, symbols, maps and make the all work in unison) - that’s where the pretty piece comes in!

  4. Provide simplicity (Check the readability of all items above)

  5. Provide emphasis (Use contrast and exaggeration or interactive elements to bring attention)

  6. Provide unity (Be consistent in your terminology, typography, layout and style) - make the information fluid!

  7. Consider information access (Use standards, internationally accepted, provide support for important context)

  8. Consider information costs (This one relates more to graphic design of web sites and implies production costs)

  9. Consider information ethics (Refers to considering copyright, media guidelines and image manipulation)

  10. Secure quality (Implies establishing the review cycles and ease of use for your reviewers to follow. If we apply that to a finished product, it can consider an organized storage or archives system).

  11. Strive for harmony ( I love this one - finding balance within the visual presentation of information)

  12. Follow aesthetic proportion (Implies finding the receiver’s aesthetic proportions, finding balance between the decorative use of color and cognitive importance)

  13. Facilitate attention (Refers to the mastery of bringing attention through text, layout, and colors)

  14. Facilitate perception (Here you must use your knowledge on perceptions of color, text, shapes, layout to make your message come through the way you want it to be)

  15. Facilitate mental processing (Utilize examples in text, provide realistic time for your audience to get the information, be consistent)

  16. Facilitate memory (Consists of presenting a limited number of information elements at the same time, with close connection of text and illustrations) - This is where the context is the key!

In addition, the information must be within the context, relevant and simple to produce actions you desire. Others call it the ability to provide a clear line of sight to show a complete picture. Others advise to present information in 3 blocks on one page to make it more meaningful and easily comprehensive. No pun intended, but there is so much information already about information design that helps simplify the information -that makes one’s head spin.  For example, there is even a comprehensive book of papers in IA (Information Architecture) or ID that one can immerse into to become an expert that can solve such problems in a matter if minutes.

While getting myself more into the subject, I found a good guide to make my quest for answers even easier and not so “overloaded” - I recommend to add ‘The Visual Display of Quantitative Information” by Edward Tufte to your library.

 

 

    Content Disclaimer

      Everything posted on this blog is a product of my own thoughts, ideas, reflections based on the professional interests. It is based on the public information, works of the colleagues and fellow researchers that are cited respectfully and my opinions as an industry professional.