Where the conversion funnel starts
Web design and development companies have long been focused on site improvements that enhance conversion – fixes to navigation, check out, and merchandising formats that optimize the experience for shoppers on-site. Now, they’re broadening their view of conversion as a process that starts before shoppers even get to a site.
“If you think of the top, wide end of the funnel as awareness and the bottom end as converting someone to buy something, we’ve usually been focused on the lower two-thirds of the funnel,” says David Fry, CEO of web design and development firm Fry Inc. “That’s making the site a better experience, giving people the shopping tools, and reducing the friction in the shopping and buying process.
But recently, Fry adds, the company is doing more work in the top third of the funnel, where the drivers aren’t so much shopping tools as they are web advertising and marketing efforts such as search engine marketing and search optimization. Fry now works with its clients to do analysis of what types of search terms are used at Google and how that relates to the products their companies are offering.
“We do more work in the top third than we used to, and it`s also smarter work,” says Fry, adding that his clients are asking more informed questions and have a better understanding of the transient nature of what’s seen on search engines. “They used to tell us, if they sold bathing suits, for example, that they wanted to see their name at the top of the list if they typed in `bathing suit` at Google,” he says. “Now they understand that’s dynamic. Bathing suits might be interesting in March, but may not be in October. The smart clients manage that almost like a day-trading scenario – they will buy and sell those words based on when they have the most value to them in the year’s shopping cycle.”
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