This is a Test! This is Only a Test

How is your website working for you?  Are you getting everything out of your site that you wanted?  Are you getting visitors to your church or new customers for your business?  in the end, those are the things you wanted, but are you getting as many as you hoped?

Getting More Converts
The point of your site is get more converts.  I don’t mean that in the Christian “convert” way (though that may actually be what a conversion is for your site).  I mean people who convert from not knowing who you are to being visitors to your site and then, ultimately, to visiting your church or buying your product or enrolling in your school, etc…People who are converted into members/customers.  So, how to you get more converts from your site?  In the end, there’s really two ways:

1. Get more visitors to your site.  The more people you get to come to your site, the more who will become members or customers.  So, if you go from getting 100 visitors a day to getting 500 visitors, you’ll probably get about 5 times as many people converting.
2. Get a higher percentage of your visitors to convert.  Perhaps you aren’t getting more visitors to your site, but if you can go from having 5% of your visitors converting to 10%, you’ve just doubled how many people are converting every month.

Getting a Higher Conversion Rate
Normally, I write a lot about getting more traffic to your site and talk about how SEO is the usually the best way to do that…and you should still do that.  However, in this article, however, I want to look at the other side of the coin, getting more of the visitors to your site to convert.  The reality is that SEO takes time and effort and you may be able to grow faster in terms of converts by increasing your website’s conversion rate.

Start by Thinking About Your Visitors
The first step towards getting as high a conversion rate as you can is taking a look at your site through the eyes of your visitors.  If possible, ask some other people (especially those who fit the profile of who you think would visit your site) to visit your site and give you honest feedback.  Be warned.  This might require some tough skin, but this kind of feedback can be enormously helpful.  If you don’t have someone to ask, then try to put yourself in the shoes of your visitors and make your best educated guess as to what would make their experience better.  It’s important to consider your visitors as you create (or recreate) your pages.  Far too often, we create pages based on what we like and that can lead to poorly converting pages.

Testing is the Key to More Conversions
Educated guesses and even feedback can get you off on the right foot, but in the end, they are opinions and guesses.  Facts are even better.  The best way to get to the facts of what will help a page to convert better is to test different ideas.  The simplest way to do this is A/B testing.  This is when you create two versions of a page and show one version to some of your visitors and the other version to the rest.  Whichever page version leads to the most conversion, is the better version of the page.  There are several software options for performing A/B tests, but one of the easiest to use is the Experiments feature in Google Analytics.

Great You’ve Tested…Now Do It Again!
There are a million things on your web pages you can test from font size, to the words you use, to the colors, images, page length, call to action, etc.  Don’t be satisfied that one test improved your conversion rate.  Keep testing different aspects of the page and try to get that page converting as well as possible.

Tell Us What You Think…

• Have you ever run a test on your site?  Tell us about it.
• What are some tests you suggest people try?

Kurt Steinbrueck

OurChurch.Com Director of Marketing Services

Kurt serves as OurChurch.Com’s Director of Marketing Services, bringing over 20 years of expertise in search marketing, and has developed numerous marketing services and served hundreds of churches, schools, ministries, and businesses.

He has authored more than 500 articles on the subject, contributing to platforms like the Christian SEO Guys blog and Church Marketing University, and is an active participant on LocalSearchForum.com.

In addition to his professional accomplishments, Kurt is an ordained minister, serving as pastor at Faith Lutheran Church in Wesley Chapel, FL, demonstrating his commitment to both faith and community. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree and a Master’s Degree from Georgia Southern University. He also holds a Specific Ministry Pastor Certificate and a General Pastor Certificate from Concordia Seminary.