Super Cool Sites, Inc.

Have you ever wondered how to determine how well your website is doing? Randy Kauffman, the Founder and President of SuperCoolSites.com shares how to use the data from your website to help you determine the effectiveness of your website to increase your traffic, leads, and sales.

This post is number 3 of a 3 part series with the purpose to help you get more traffic, leads, and sales. 

The simple goals of your website is to get more traffic, convert that traffic to leads, and convert those leads into sales.  This is what we call The 3 Simple Website Goals. 

This is part of a 3-part series on how to help your website convert more. 

The first article was on setting up Google Analytics on your site so you can see what percentage of visitors you are converting to take action on your site.  Google Analytics also tells you how many visitors you are receiving daily.   There are other programs you can use for analytics, but we think Google is the best because they give very detailed information. 

The second article was on how to create a value proposition, which is a great way to increase your conversion rate.  We had one particular client that made over a million dollars off of one value proposition in a period of 18 months. 

The Reason It is Important To Know How Well Your Website Is Doing

The reason you’ll want to know how well your website is doing is mostly for advertising purposes.  If you know how much each visitor is worth, you can spend less than that in advertising to get them to your website. 

The problem with businesses spending money on advertising that doesn’t work is that they don’t know how well their website is doing in the first place.   They spend thousands of dollars to drive traffic to their website without knowing if their website is helping them convert that traffic to leads. 

How to determine how well your website is doing.

Let’s start out by assuming you’ve followed along, and you have Google Analytics set up on your website.  When you know how much traffic you have and how much you are converting that traffic to leads and those leads to sales, it is easy to calculate the value of a single site visitor. 

How to calculate the value of a single website visitor. 

We’ve made it super easy for you to calculate with our Website Conversion Calculator. 

For this example, we are going to use the following numbers:

Gross revenue per sale:  $1000.    We have clients that range anywhere from $20 a sale to well over $20,000 for a single sale.  This example number makes it easier to see how the calculations are done.

Profit Percentage:  50%.  Fifty percent is an average profit percentage for our clients.  You can calculate your own profit percentage by taking the difference between your gross revenue per sale ($1000) and the cost ($500) and then dividing the gross profit ($500) by the revenue ($1000).  In this case it gives you a profit margin of .50.  Multiply that number by 100 to get the profit percentage 50%.

Website Visitors Daily:  20.   This number comes directly from your Google Analytics.  To get the most accurate number to use for your daily visitors, take an average of the past 30 days of visitors. 

Conversion Rate:  .25%     As a reminder, the conversion rate is the number of people you get to take an action from your website.  Those actions can be anything from clicking on a coupon, filling out a form, calling your office, or clicks on something that is for sale on your site.

Percentage of Contacts Sold:  50%.  If you are in the service businessand you sell to half of the people who took action on your website, your percentage of contacts sold would be 50%.

Repeat Business $2000.    Depending onthe type of business you are in your repeat business will vary.  A criminal defense attorney may not have any repeat business; however a carpet cleaning business may have quarterly repeat business from a single client.   It is a lot less expensive to keep a current client than it is to attract a new one.

So let’s calculate this and see what we get. 

Consider The Lifetime Value of a Customer

In our example the lifetime value of a new visitor is tripled.  That is because we are taking the gross revenue per sale ($1000) and adding the value of their potential repeat business($2000).  In this example this triples the lifetime value of each new site visitor. 

This is important to know because a lot of companies are willing to lose money in the first year in order to have a client they can keep.  This is less expensive than attracting a new client.  So the value per visitor goes up by 3 times. 

The Infinite Possibilities for Increasing How Well Your Website Is Doing

Let’s change some of these numbers and see how we can increase our profits! 

Imagine if you were to increase your conversion rate from 0.25% to 2.0%.  You could do this by working on your value propositions on your website as we talked about in a previous article. 

With just that one change, you can increase your sales per week from 0.175 to 1.4 sales per week giving you a revenue of $1,4000 per week.   That’s a huge difference from $87.50!  

Planning For Your Future

Now you are getting to the point where you can start doing some advertising. 

Let’s say you are doing a 5-year plan and you can now see that a new visitor is worth $15 in lifetime value.    You might be wiling to invest $7.50 to attract a new client.    

Let’s look at another example.  Let’s say you really work on your site and you get your conversion rate up to 4% which increases the value of each new visitor to your site to $10.  Most of our clients do convert at about 4%, so this is a reasonable number to reach towards. 

Using Data Driven Advertising as A Business Tool

So you have your conversion rate up to 4% which brings the value per visitor to $10 per visitor to your website, now you can start advertising. 

In this case it is easy to see that investing $5 to attract a new client would be a sound idea.  But let’s check with our website conversion calculator to be certain. 

Let’s see what happens when we purchase 30 new clients at $5 each in advertising dollars.  Your investment in advertising increases the number of visitors and increase the number of sales.  So you can see that your profit per year is $182,000, your Revenue per year is $364,000 and your lifetime values go way up. 

You’ll want to make sure you calculate your Advertising costs into the equation to make sure your numbers are going up.  In this case your profit per year went up to $182,000 and your advertising expenses were $54,750.  This makes your simplified gross profit around $127K for the year.  That is still a heck of an increase from the $72,800 that you would have received without advertising at all.    

Now It’s Your Turn!

When you know your numbers and you see your conversion rate is 1% you can find out what each visitor is worth and you can use that number to invest in more traffic, so you can increase the number of  leads you get,  and you can get more sales! 

Step 1 in increasing your conversion rates is to Determine What Each Visitor To Your Website is Worth.

Step 2 is to add value propositions to your website.

Step 3 is to determine how well your website is doing using this post in combination with our Website Conversion Calculator

Watch Randy explain this article in this YouTube Video.

In this article we map out what you need to include when creating a value proposition for your website This is Step 2 of “The Ultimate Guide to Increase Website Conversions.”

In the first article of this series we showed you how to get analytics set up so you can see what is happening when visitors come to your site.

Once you have analytics on your site, it is time to start doing things that make your website convert higher. 

First of all, you want your site to be interactive. 

That means you want your visitors to be easily able to navigate through your site and meet each and every one of their needs.  You want them to be able to call you from a mobile device, submit an email to you, sign up for specials, buy a product, or download some information.  Having  them be able to can easily interact  with you is what you want.

One of the goals of interacting with your visitors is to at least get an email address. This will help you market to them in the future.

We’ve done a lot of conversions for a lot of businesses and the one thing I like to do more than anything else as a start is to have a good value proposition on your home page that lets people know they are in the right place for what they want.   You can do value propositions on several pages and that is a good idea, but you have to start somewhere. The best place to start is on your homepage.

Let me give you an example.

A Good Value Proposition Consists of the Following

An attention-grabbing headline –You want a headline that evokes emotion, something that get’s people excited.    “Protect Your Car From The Summer Heat With Window Tinting.” That is pretty good, but we might be able to do better.  

A 2- 3 sentence paragraph that expounds upon the headline.  

Then you have 3 bullet points.  It must be 3.  Don’t put 5 or 6 or 7.   Three is the magic number for some reason on websites.

A double opt-in call to action button and form.

A call to action button.   In this example, the call to action is “Request a Quote Today!”  This button is a part of a double opt-in form.

A nice form attached to the double opt-in button that let’s the visitor interact with you.

A nice graphic.  You also want to have a nice graphic to go along with the value proposition.   The graphic draws attention to the value proposition so your site visitors can read it and know whether they are in the right place for what they are looking for or not. 

Easily viewable on mobile devices.

People will fill out the form twice as much if there is a button leading to the form compared to just having the form included on the page with the value proposition.   There is a perceived choice involved when there is a button leading to the form.  How easy is that to do. Do you need a question mark here or is this a rhetorical question?  All your visitors must do is decide if they want to request a quote and when they click the button a form pops up so they can simply fill it out. 

Once you start to do something on a website, it is easier to do more.   On some websites, you’ll see they have a button that says, “Put in your birthday” and when you put in your birthday you think, “That was easy.” And then they ask, “Where do you live?”   and they keep stepping up further and further for more information.  But once you get started, it is easier to keep people going. 

So, for any business you are in, you’re going to need a value proposition.

Let’s Take a Look at Value Propositions in the Plumbing Industry

Benjamin Franklin Plumbing

This is not too good.  First, the design is not too good.

It looks better on mobile, but it doesn’t give you any way to interact with it.  There is no phone number on the site until the very bottom of the page and it is not clickable. 

This site’s CSS was wacky when we looked at it while recording the accompanying video. When we looked at it the following day, the site looked much better! And some of the problems with their value proposition seem to be fixed.

Let’s look at another one.

Accurate Plumbing

Well, at least you know what they do, it says, “Accurate Plumbing.” 

Again, there is no value proposition.  When you scroll way down on their page you see, “Efficient Plumbers.” 

It is a good thing to have as a value proposition right at the top.  But there is nothing to do on this site.  There are no interactions, other than the phone number. 

The point I want to make here is the very first thing you want to do is have a good value proposition on the home page.  

Now, let’s look at one of our websites.

Koenig & Owen, LLC – Columbus Criminal Defense Attorneys

Their Value Proposition has all the elements needed to help site visitors know that they are in the right place for what they want.

A good graphic with the people on their team.   It is always nice to see smiling faces.

An attention-grabbing headline.  Value proposition that evokes emotion. 

A 2 to 3 sentence paragraph expounding on the headline. 

3 Bullet points.  No more.  No less.

A double opt-in call to action button and form.

Their value proposition looks good on mobile too!

We’ve increased their conversion rate by 4 times just with this value proposition.  

Can you imagine doing one simple thing to your website and it quadruples your business! That would be pretty nice!

Add Value Propositions to Each Service You Offer

After you have a Good Value Proposition on your home page and you are using Google Analytics to tract your conversion rates, you can work on other pages. 

You’ll want to add a value proposition to each page that lets your visitors know what services you offer and give your site visitors a place to interact.  Especially if you are in the service business, you want people to contact you.  A value proposition let’s them know that they are in the right place for what they want. 

If you are selling things online, it has to be a little different.  You must show the product, share all your information about the product, plus make it easy for them to buy the product.  I’ll cover that in another post. 

We hope this help’s you understand what a value proposition is and what goes into creating one so you can get started right away helping your website convert higher.

Now It’s Your Turn!

Step 1 in increasing your conversion rates is to Determine What Each Visitor To Your Website is Worth.

Step 2 is to add value propositions to your website.

Watch Randy explain this article in this YouTube Video.

If you want to know how to make your website convert more, you need to dive into your data.

Step One – Determine What Each Visitor To Your Website is Worth

Its difficult to know if your website is producing the results you want, if you are not looking at the data. 

(Would you rather watch Randy explain this on YouTube? Click here! )

Before you look at the data, you need to find out what each visitor to your website is worth to you.  That way you are informed about whether investing in ads on Google, Facebook, or somewhere else is a good idea.  And if it is a good idea to place ads, you can clearly see the value of each new visitor to your site and decide how much you are willing to pay to attract more visitors each month.  

Knowing what each visitor is worth helps you get started and fine tune what you are doing online.

A good website should be designed for the single purpose of producing more for your company. 

• More clients
• More sales online
• More contacts
• More people contacting the business
• More awareness about the business

You’d be surprised by how many businesses don’t know if their website is producing more of anything!

First and Foremost – Make Sure You Have Google Analytics Set Up On Your Site

Before you can determine what a visitor is worth, you need to know how many visitors you are getting.  And you need Google Analytics set up so you can clearly see how many people are visiting your site each month. 

It doesn’t do any good to start playing around with your site, unless you know what your numbers are. 

You might be getting phone calls, but you don’t know what percentage of them are coming from your site.  You might be getting 5 calls a month and what you don’t know is that you have 2000 people a month that are going to your site.  And if you were converting at 1%, you’d would be getting 20 calls.  Or 4 times as much as you were getting before.  If you’re converting at 3% you would be getting 60 CALLS OR 12 TIMES THE CALLS!  Think of the difference this would make in your business!

If you have a brand-new site or a site that has been around for a while and you want to get around to making it better and get it to produce at a much higher rate than you are now.

The very first thing you must do is have Google Analytics on your site, if you don’t have it already. 

Google Analytics Can Tell You A Lot About Your Site Visitors

Google Analytics is a program that will tell you a lot of interesting things about your site visitors. 

Within the analytics platform, you can find a lot of data about your site visitors. 

• How many people are visiting your site each month
• What pages are they looking at on your site
• Where they are coming from.  (search engines, links from other sites, etc.)
• What part of the world they are in when they visit your site.

You can see where your audience is coming from, and you can drill down into what country and then what state, and even what cities they are in when they visit.    

To help you determine what each visitor is worth, you need to set up Goals within GA. 

Goals Are The Gateway To Visitor Value

You want to set up goals in Google Analytics that help you see the value of each visitor interaction. 

Here is an example from one of our sites that already has goals set up.  Each goal has a different value based on their success in converting visitor interaction into a sale.  

Visitor interaction that you can track on Google Analytics:

• When a visitor clicks on your phone number from their mobile device to call you.
• When a form is filled out on your site.
• When someone signs up for a free offer.
• When someone clicks on a coupon.
• How many products did you sell online
• And more…

There are many more types of visitor interaction that Google can track.  These are just a few. 

An Example Of How Goals Look Inside Google Analytics

In August of this year our client has 20 goal completions.  Three of them were from visitors filling out a contact form.  Twelve were from mobile phone clicks, and 5 were from visitors signing up for free consultations.   

The total goal value for the month is $4900.  Google Analytics calculates the goal conversion rate automatically and shows that it is .45%. 

What Is The Value Of A New Customer?

To determine the value of a new customer, you’ll need to determine the revenue per customer minus any costs that are involved in servicing that customer, including costs of goods, and cost to service.  

Each business is different so each business will have a different new customer value.   You may sell custom golf carts and the average price of a golf cart is $7,000 and you net $2000 on each new cart you sell.  A new customer is worth $2000 to your business. 

This is a simplified example. 

Great businesses can drill down their customer values and calculate the lifetime value of their customers.   One business we worked with had a weekly class they taught for $15 each week, and the average student showed up 30 weeks a year and the class was still going after 5 years.  She calculated the lifetime value of a new student to be about $2,250.  

The new student/customer value was $15.    

For the purpose of this article let’s say that your business’s New Customer Value is $1000, to keep it simple.

Once you know your new client value, you can get excited about setting up goal values in Google Analytics.

Calculating Goal Values in Google Analytics

So let’s look at how to set up goals and determine how much each visitor interaction with your website is worth.   

Let’s say that you’ve tested it with your team and that from 10 new calls you get one new client. 

That is 1 of 10 new callers becomes a new client.  So that is a 10% sales conversion rate.  And you know this because you’ve tracked it over the past few months.  

It is easy to see that each new caller from a mobile phone click is worth $100. 

You’ve already determined the value of a new customer to be $1000 and the percentage of new callers that turn into customers is 10%, or 1 out of 10. 

So the goal value for a phone click is $100. 

Here is how it looks on a spreadsheet:

You can apply this to any visitor interaction on your site.

If you have coupons on your site, you can see how many people clicked on the coupon from your site and how many coupons were redeemed at your place of business.   

If you are selling something online, you can see how many people went to see the product and how many people bought the product. 

What you want to get down to eventually is determining how much each visitor to your website is worth. 

Determining How Much Each Visitor Is Worth

Let’s say you have 1000 people visiting your site each month.  You know this is true because you can see it on Google Analytics.   You also know that 5 people called your business from interacting on your website.  That is 5 calls in one month. 

Since you’ve already calculated that each new caller is worth $100, and set up the goal value for each new caller at $100, the goal value for phone clicks for the month of August is $500. 

One More Step

There is one more step you need to take in order to determine how much each visitor to your site is worth. 

We know that you have 1000 visitors a month so your website should be making $500 a month from those 5 phone clicks (visitor interactions). 

Then, each site visitor is worth 50 cents. 

$500 /1000 visitors = $.50 per visitor.  This is a .005% conversion rate.  If you can get the conversion rate up to 3%, the value of each visitor is $3.00.  At this rate you can easily spend $1.50 to get visitors to your site and make a nice profit.

Expanding How Visitors Interact With Your Site

If you are doing it right, you will have visitors filling out contact forms, asking for free quotes, signing up for specials, and downloading coupons.   And let’s not forget about the visitors that buy things from you online. 

There will be many ways visitors interact, and many paths to help them convert from visitors to paying customers.   You can use this same formula for each customer path. 

Two Ways To Help Your Website Convert Higher For Your Business 

So how do you make your website to convert higher?

1. Increase the amount of traffic to your site. 

If you increase the number of visitors to your site, you will increase the amount of sales if all else stays the same.  So if your monthly traffic increase from 1000 visitors to 2000 visitors, you’ll go from making $500 a month to $1000 a month. 

We will share some tips on increasing website traffic in another post. 

• Increase your conversion rate. 

If you increase the conversion rate to 2% from 0.5%.  You’ll get 20 Calls a month instead of 5.  We already determined that each new caller was worth $100.  You’ll go from $500 to $2000 a month from phone calls.  And each new visitor is worth $2. 

We will share more about increasing conversion rates in future posts.  For now, know you

This is a quick lesson on how to determine what each visitor to your website is worth and how to determine the value of your goals so you can set up Google Analytics, so you have accurate data each month which is the foundation for increasing the effectiveness of your website.  

This is step number one.  Do this before anything!  Good Luck!

Now It’s Your Turn!

1. Check your analytics on Google Analytics.
2. Visit our Conversion Calculator to plug in the numbers from your website.
3. Watch Randy explain this article in this YouTube Video.