Prior to launching any digital strategy or conversion optimization project, it is essential to have clear and measurable goals and metrics. This will enable you to monitor your progress, evaluate your performance, and recognize your strengths and weaknesses. Common goals and metrics for digital strategy and conversion optimization include traffic (number of visitors to website, landing page, or app), engagement (duration of stay, actions taken, frequency of return), conversion (number completing desired outcome such as signing up, buying, or downloading), and revenue (amount made from conversions and return on investment (ROI)).
It’s also important to have clarity on the segment or audience that the campaigns or optimization projects are aiming to reach and what’s the strategic objective. Some targets are more difficult to convert than others, and that should be taken into consideration when determining the metrics.
Once you have your goals and metrics, you need to collect and analyze data from various sources and tools, such as analytics platforms like Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, or Mixpanel. Testing tools like Google Optimize, Optimizely, or VWO are also important for running experiments and comparing different versions of your website, landing page, or app. Feedback tools such as surveys, polls, or reviews can capture the voice and opinions of your customers and prospects. Heatmap tools like Hotjar, Crazy Egg, or Mouseflow are useful for understanding how your visitors interact with your website, landing page, or app.
It is important to use a mix of tools that integrate with each other so you're not spending time figuring out which tool to trust. Your entire system should be your source of truth, not one tool.
Interpreting and acting on the results of your data collection and analysis is the next step. Ask yourself what the main trends and patterns are in the data, which segments, channels, or pages are best and worst performing, what issues or barriers prevent visitors from converting, and which elements or features motivate them to convert. Based on your findings, consider how you can improve your digital strategy and conversion optimization.
Seeing problems and patterns in the data is only the first half. Having hypotheses on how to address them is the second. You can leverage customer feedback, interviews, surveys, competitive data, etc., to understand why a problem is happening and how you might address it in a way that is unique to your business. This takes deep understanding of your customers and their pains and lots of (often non-performant) ideas to make meaningful change.
Finally, it is essential to repeat and refine the process of setting goals, collecting data, analyzing results, and making changes. Digital strategy and conversion optimization are not one-time events, but continuous processes that require testing, learning, and optimization. This will help you stay ahead of the competition and changing market trends and customer preferences. It will also increase your efficiency and effectiveness by focusing on what matters most. Additionally, it will enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty by delivering better value and experience. Ultimately, it will help you grow your revenue and profitability by maximizing your conversions and ROI.
The end goal should always be to enhance UX throughout the entire journey. Independent of optimization, performance marketing professionals, digital marketing and strategic marketing managers should all have that single goal in mind. It is great to prototype and refine this process, optimize KPIs, even ROI, but if the user experience is not great, this is will not be sustainable in the long term. Regardless of the industry, market, country or time that we are analyzing, all touch points online and offline alike! But online customers/users typically expect more and better UI.