Conversion Rates

Any company or organization with a product to sell, service to offer or event to grow knows that people can’t buy, receive or participate in something they know nothing about. That’s where marketing steps in. However, beyond a creative and strategic approach to marketing comes analyzing when and why a particular action was taken. This is where conversion rate comes in to play. The WebAnalytics Association explains that, “conversions usually represent important business outcomes, such as completing a purchase or requesting a quote. Sometimes they are chosen because they indicate potential for future behavior, such as clicking on an advertisement, registering for more information, or starting a checkout process” (2008).

Special Olympics New Jersey has recently begun tracking conversions through Facebook advertising for special event fundraisers. For the organization’s Battle the Beach 5k event a Facebook campaign was implemented for a period of several weeks. A piece of code generated by Facebook was placed into the check-out screen for the event, so Facebook could report the number of people who saw the ad who actually registered for the event after clicking the ad. The ads were retargeted to people who had visited the Battle the Beach website in the last week before seeing the Facebook ad. At the conclusion of the campaign, 104 people who saw the Facebook ad registered for the event after clicking the ad.

              This conversion metric is extremely valuable because it indicates that people are actually registering for the event after seeing the ad; they aren’t just “wasting” a paid click to find out more information.

              Despite the seemingly successful nature of the paid Facebook campaign for Battle the Beach (at least in the retarget), SONJ also noticed that the vast majority of visitors from the generally-targeted ad set were viewing the Battle the Beach site on their phones and then bouncing from the site immediately. The marketing was working, but the conversion was simply not happening. In fact, that ad set only generated a handful of conversions despite the huge number of clicks and impressions it received. So what was stopping people from the general ad set and what was making people from the retargeted set actually register?

              The culprit appears to be the user experience of the Battle the Beach registration site. People who visited the Battle the Beach site multiple times and were able to figure out the tricky navigation were seeing the Facebook ads a lot more frequently. Ultimately when someone from this ad set decided to actually participate in the run, there was a strong likelihood a Battle the Beach ad would be at the top of the newsfeed. However, for the general ad set targeted at people who very likely had never visited the Battle the Beach website, the initial experience trying to register was a bad one. In an article from Entrepreneur.com, Brett Relander explains that there are several factors related to web design and user experience that weigh heavily on an individual’s ultimate conversion: usability, conversion-centric design features, favorable aesthetics, and ease of navigation (2014).

              In the case of the Battle the Beach site, none of these criteria were actually met. Visitors made it to the website but then had to pinch and zoom on a phone (no responsive design), decipher a web of menu options and look at a rather blah design. The site certainly did not set itself up to foster an environment of conversions. The fact that the retargeted ads performed so much better indicates that visitors had to go back to the website multiple times before figuring out exactly how to register. 

 Retrieved from www.btb5k.org.

              

 Tracking conversions will ultimately help SONJ assess the entire user experience. Even with a creative and strategic marketing campaign, if the experience for a potential event participant is a negative or difficult one, the conversion rates will indicate the need for some serious adjustments.