Pod1 Blog

Best practice tells us that I should start this post with an image so I do.

This will significantly improve the number of readers to finish reading this post. So I hope you will, and Goggle will tell me if you actually did. The industry average length of a blog posting is between 100 and 249 words (see above) so I will try to stick with this.

This brings me to what I want to write about. “Industry averages” and “Best practice”. Two of the most commonly used buzz words these days only topped by “We’ll make it totally Web 2.0“.

Many people see Best Practice as “Everyone does it” or even worse “My competitor does it so it must be good.” There was a wonderful blogpost from our friends at getelsatic.com. They compared 101 Add To Cart buttons. The language alone tells you that these guys are Americans. So if we look at these buttons, what does this tell us? Correct, there doesn’t seem to be a ‘best practice’. Ok 58% use the phrase “Add to Cart” but that will probably not convert many visitors in the UK. So there goes best practice again.

Industry averages are seen as a tool to compare your site, just like Top 10 charts are. However, just like Top 10 Charts, industry averages measure, well, averages…and miss out on an awful lot of things on the way. Conversion Rate (beware the buzz-word-o-meter here) Industry Avergaes is what most of our clients ask us for. Well the answer is not that simple. Commonly the answer would be between 2.5% and 3%. However, if I take for example the Top 10 list of the top converting retail sites I would see a very different picture. First of all these sites convert at 14% and above. For the sake of argument we could say that we should only take the flower companies, if you are a flower business, and we see that the average site converts at 24.35%. Both figures are far away from the Industry Average that you will find in other corners of the Internet.

So what does industry average tell you? I propose that it tells you absolutely nothing, zilch, nil, nada. It isn’t even good for a comparison if you narrow down the number of websites looked at. The all important question here is: “The industry Average Conversion rate is between 2-3%” “AND? What now?” So how are you doing if you convert at 10%? Converting at 10% still means that you don’t convert 90% of your traffic and there is something you can do about it to get your business to convert better.

“So what now?” you ask? The answer is very simple. Instead of asking for Best Practice and Industry Averages you should look at your customers and see what they prefer. Just because Amazon uses a 5-step checkout and makes millions of bucks doesn’t mean that you should use 5 steps. Just because the industry average conversion rate is 2% you shouldn’t give yourself a pad on the back and say: “Great, let’s all go and party in Vegas next weekend, Analytics tells us we convert at 3%”.

Do an exit survey and ask for Customer Satisfaction (No don’t even think about adding a How Did You Hear About Us). Dig down into your analytics, or let us do it for you, and see where you loose the remaining 97% of your traffic. Or start by trying to shift your CEOs business orientated view “It’s all about the Brand”, to a more customer centric experience “Do they find what they are looking for?”. If you are interested, here are some case studies we did.

This post is well above 500 words but I hope you enjoyed it anyway.

Any questions, just email me.