Amadesa

John Lovett, a Senior Analyst at Forrester Research, recently published a research report titled “Sharpening Web Site Relevance.” It is available at Forrester’s web site (registration/purchase required), and provides a great perspective on how important it is to approach web site optimization from the customer’s perspective.

It makes a ton of sense when you consider how much clutter there is on the web. He cites the Jupiter Research/NPD Retail Consumer Survey, which indicated that on average consumers visit 2.5 web sites prior to purchase (with two out of every five visiting three or more sites). But when you look at the vast majority of sites out on the web, it’s shocking to see how many of them seem to still just subscribe to the notion that “build it and they will come” – page layouts are poor, product details are difficult to find, content presented doesn’t resonate in the least bit, etc. It’s no wonder that online conversion rates are typically in the low single digits. Customers have low patience levels and even lower tolerance for web sites that don’t engage them from the get go. It’s almost comical when you hear astronomical data points about how much companies are spending even just to get visitors to the site (like Google raking in over $21 billion last year from its Adwords).

Let me see how this makes sense. Companies spend billions to get visitors to the site. The site stinks. It’s not relevant. Some high ninety-something percent abandon and don’t convert. So dump more money into traffic generation. Repeat steps. Hmmm…Great business strategy.

But make the site more relevant and the equation changes. Customers become more engaged. The site gets stickier. Loyalty increases. The odds for conversions increase dramatically. Mr. Lovett goes on to point out that there are numerous ways to increase web site relevance, from geo-targeting to personalized URLs to recommendations. Mr. Lovett also highlights Smooth Fitness, one of Amadesa’s customers and also ranked on Internet Retailer’s Top 500. Smooth Fitness is leveraging Amadesa’s Behavioral Targeting algorithms, which collect hundreds of data points from each anonymous web site visitor, to automatically deliver more relevant and engaging content that translates into increased click-through rates, conversions, revenues per visit and average order values. Mr. Lovett also notes that the best recipe for translating relevance into returns calls for three key ingredients: data, insight and technology. Of course you can also just keep on with the status quo of funneling more dollars and focus on acquisition and keep your fingers crossed that engagement and conversion will just improve on its own. Let me know how that works out.